


Don't Heckle, Dear

by General_Stardust, PlanetsideSonata



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, First Time, Kidnapping, Masturbation, Mind Games, Mind Sex... sort of?, Other, Pegging, Post-Season/Series 12, Roleplay, TARDIS should stop helping, Voyeurism, but also between these two, chase scene, for these regenerations, the Master is prisoner
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:14:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 64,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23329075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/General_Stardust/pseuds/General_Stardust, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlanetsideSonata/pseuds/PlanetsideSonata
Summary: Sometimes you find your best enemy, knock them unconscious, and decide to hold them aboard your TARDIS. Because you both deserve a break, really.Not a sex break. Obviously. Those aren't even a thing.Or are they?
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/O, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 112
Kudos: 195





	1. A Room Without A View

It was years before the Doctor saw him again.

Three years, seven months, four days, nine hours, and fifty eight seconds, (Earth time, since she spent so much of her life working in Earth time) to be precise. Long enough that she had occasionally let herself think maybe, _maybe_ it had actually happened. Maybe the Death Particle (was the one nonsensical thing in all of reality that could actually snuff out her sulking, smoky shadow) had actually done its job right. It would make sense, in a way, the symbolism of all that organic matter dissolving back into the ether and diffusing his fury right along with it. He had to be completely unmade for the universe to properly finish with him. Like a tumor, cut away and burnt up, returning to its base particles, scattered back into creation to begin anew as something else.

Later, it would occur to her that such a thought had been foolish. The idea that two of her greatest enemies would so beautifully cancel each other out, leaving her standing alone, the solitary victor? When had she ever been that lucky? When had her getaways ever come out so clean?

To be fair, she’d had lots of other things to worry about. First prison, then escaping prison. Then back to her fam, then Daleks again. Then losing some of the fam (saying goodbye to Ryan and Graham, letting them go back to the lives they never really left behind) and hitting the road with Yaz. Beautiful, brilliant Yaz… but of course she’d left too, in the end. Because that was how it worked. The Doctor got to take their hands, watch them run, help them soar, but eventually they still had to go their own way (or die trying). Sometimes, when the Doctor felt particularly calculating, she wrote it off as a biological issue. The human form could only take so much strain, after all.

But that wasn’t fair. The Doctor took breaks, too. Sometimes for decades.

(That’s what this was, she told herself. A break.)

She had found him again. Up to nothing very nice, as usual, but this time (she had nothing to lose) her reflexes were sharp and her mind was sharper. She’d beat him at his own game. Gone all in and taken the whole pot. Covered the field in one breakaway sprint and scored the goal for the championship. Executed that flawless double backflip and three twists for the gold medal.

Which is to say, she’d snuck up behind him and hit him over the head with something heavy, then dragged his dead weight onto the TARDIS. It had taken some time, and he’d kept waking up, necessitating additional blows to keep him less squirmy and more unconscious.

Good job his skull was particularly thick.

The TARDIS had provided her with a cell to keep him. Bit dramatic, but that was certainly what the converted space was meant to be—a large room with rugs and art on the walls, and one corner closed off with bars. The Doctor had dragged him in and shut the door and let him recover (and nurse the headache) on his own, while she took her best precautions. Biolocks on the TARDIS controls. Outer doors programmed to keep him shut in. Alarms set to trigger if he managed to touch anything he shouldn’t. She didn’t really have a plan, but letting him wander wasn’t an option. It just wasn’t.

Well, it probably wasn’t.

She’d left him in there longer than was kind, or even humane. Not to punish him (though he deserved it) or to teach him a lesson (he’d never learn one), but because she knew that once she confronted him, she would be subjected to his scrutiny, required to answer (at least some of) his questions. She would have to tell him he couldn’t leave, and couldn’t wander, and she didn’t have a good enough reason to make him accept things as he found them. This wasn’t their usual arrangement, after all, or even their unusual one. He hadn’t been surrendered to her care on this go-around, she’d just done it. Kidnapped him. It was unlikely that she’d be able to talk her way out of that.

Well, that wasn’t true. She could always talk her way out.

When the Doctor finally decided to check up on the Master, he was sitting on the only piece of furniture allotted to him in that little space behind the bars--a beat up old wingback chair that betrayed the TARDIS’s opinion of him (dramatic, but weathered and poorly kept). He showed no surprise at the Doctor’s entrance, or any reaction at all, in fact. He just sat, with his hands curved over the armrests like sets of claws and his heavy-lidded stare fixed on a dusty painting on the far wall.

The Doctor leaned back against the door jamb, feigning a casual attitude she did not, in that moment, possess. “Feeling alright? Sorry about the head, hope you didn’t wind up concussed.”

No reply.

She folded her arms across her chest, shook her head and unfolded them, tucked her hands into her trouser pockets. (Bodies were so pointless sometimes.) “You can’t blame me for this. We didn’t exactly part on good terms, and you’re supposed to be dead, don’t forget. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me how you wriggled out of it this time?”

He blinked, just once.

It took her a moment to find something else to say, and she was already getting punchy. Not a great sign for their first conversation. “Come on, it’s not that bad. We did it before, for decades. You in a vault, me as your keeper. Thought you’d be thrilled.”

“Thrilled,” he mimicked, eyes finally sliding over to her, like a predator that hadn’t yet decided whether or not it was hungry. “What would thrill me about this? Last time you brought me presents, there was takeaway, it was nice and roomy.” The Doctor tried to think how she would respond to that very fair complaint, but he beat her to it. “Did you keep my piano, by the way?”

She sniffed. “You expect me to believe you actually care?”

“I liked that piano.”

The Doctor thought about being withholding, but eventually relented. “Yeah, think it’s still lying about somewhere.”

The expression on his face indicated that he was about to say something scathing, but when he opened his mouth, what he said was, “Probably out of tune by now.”

"Possibly." She dragged over a wooden dining chair (wonder where the rest of the set ended up) and sat down in it, legs akimbo, just a few feet from him.

“Why am I here?”

"You're here for the same reason as always," the Doctor said. "It's the only way we ever talk."

He sneered at that. "You can't make me. I talked for ages the last time, and it did no good." He tilted his head back into the cushion of the chair, stretching his neck, appearing to get comfortable. She wasn’t sure whether it was a good or bad sign. (Whether he was faking, drawing her in.)

"I suppose I can't," she agreed. "But you had such a go at me when we saw each other last, I thought turnabout was only fair play."

"Did I?" He shook his head, feigning ignorance or maybe sheer innocence. "There was so much going on..."

The Doctor pursed her lips at him.

"What?" He pursed his lips right back. "Not the answer you're looking for? Tres désolé, ma chérie."

The Doctor sighed, though not too heavily, as she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. This wasn’t working. She needed to change tactics. "Why do you do that?"

His eyes (so expressive, so telling) darted away, just for a moment. “Do what?”

"I mean, I'm all about the bluster, me," the Doctor continued, blithely, tugging her coat off of her shoulders and letting it drape over the back of the chair. "But it's because I'm trying to work something out, or to buy time, or to make friends. You do it just... to do it. It's almost like you can't stop yourself. You were never like that before. You were always so... you know, so stoic."

A hint of a smile threatened his whole dour aura. "I must be very good if you never think I'm doing it to buy time.”

"You don't babble when you're buying time,” the Doctor said, waving a dismissive hand. “It's different." Still, she could see that he’d got some momentum now, and his thumbs were tracing the pads of his fingers, over and over. She couldn’t tell if the repetitive action was meant to soothe, or to fire himself up.

"I could feel it, you know, when you saw me again.” He bit his lower lip, sly and somehow coquettish. “The relief coming off you like waves at high tide. It's like a drug, your relief."

Something ran through the Doctor's veins at that, a warm sort of shiver. (Was it muggy in here? Couldn’t be. The TARDIS always kept the humidity down in rooms like this.) "You've never admitted as much before."

"Before I had nothing to gain from admitting it." He leaned forward suddenly, eyes fever-bright, round and bottomless. "Now I get _you_. Every micro reaction, every change in your posture, all the little things you're always trying to hide from the casual onlooker. You're so close."

His eyes began to dart to different points on her face, her neck, her shoulders, and it brought more heat to the Doctor’s skin, pooled warmth in her gut. Something was changing, there in that room, around them or between them or emanating from them--she couldn’t tell which. And… well, it could almost be fun, whatever game he was trying to play. There were no lives currently on the line, no apocalypse that he’d created and she had to give the majority of her attention to. "It's... nice, actually," the Doctor decided, after a moment. "Just us, the way I keep asking for."

"The way you keep asking for?" His brow furrowed, pretending to shock and confusion. "You, great progenitor of our species, keep asking for _me_ , personally?”

"That's not fair," she said. Why was he going there already? She didn’t want to go there. She didn’t want to think about any of that right now. "That wasn't my choice, I was a child. And I don't even remember it."

He winced, almost as though he were embarrassed on her behalf. "That excuse is going to get old fast, Doctor."

"I haven't even used it yet!" she shouted, throwing up her hands. They were only talking. It shouldn’t be this easy for him to get under her skin. (She was allowing it. Maybe she did feel guilty about kidnapping him. Or maybe it was that strange buzz under her skin when his eyes glanced along the line of her collar bone.) "I didn't make you a Time Lord. _They_ did that. I never said I was special, _you're_ the one saying that. All I ever knew was that I didn’t belong.”

He gave a whistle that sounded like a bomb falling toward its intended target. "Even you're not this obtuse. A lack of belonging _denotes_ specialness. It makes one unique, it sets one above, apart, beyond--any of this ringing bells? Rattling some percussion instruments?"

The Doctor was unprepared for the anger that rose up in her, but tackled it in her customary fashion—by standing and putting some distance between them. (Running away, always running.) "A lack of belonging makes you lonely," she told him bitterly, staring at the picture that had been holding his interest when she’d entered; an old book engraving from _Alice Through the Looking Glass_ in which the young heroine was being scolded by the Red Queen. "Being set apart means being denied connection, love, understanding. It means being prized for _what_ you are, not _who_ you are. If everything you're saying is true, that just shows that I was nothing more than a tool to them. That's not special. That's sad."

There was a moment's pause, and when the answer came, it wasn’t his voice that she heard in reply. Instead, she received a soft hum in her peripheral senses, then a small press of consciousness. The edge of his mind was creeping along hers, scraping haphazardly at all the niches she never bothered to guard as carefully as she should. The Doctor shook her head a little, reflexively, but it didn't dislodge him. (Focus, Doctor.) "I didn't realize," she said, raising her voice a little, "that you still defined yourself by what they thought."

Those tendrils dug in sharply then, viciously, a mark of his surprise—did he think he was the only one who could play the manipulation game? "What are you on about?"

The Doctor was stopping herself from flinching. She should push him off, really. Push him out. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t. "Who cares what they thought about us?" she said instead, whirling back to look at him (still sitting there fixed to his chair like nothing was happening at all). "Who was treated well or badly, who was special or a freak or both? Those days are gone, they're literally dead. The Time War took them from us, and then you took them a second time. We grew up. We changed. We made choices; some good, some bad, some just different. When are you going to let go of their definitions of you?"

"Oh, so that's easy for you, is it?" His grip was tightening around her in the absence of fight, the way someone would suffocate a kitten. "Why? Because you know who you are? Even with everything they erased?"

"I never said that."

"Then you'll have to help me, dear—not sure how you’ve broken free of them either."

It all sounded so benign when set against what was really happening. He was clutching her in a fierce embrace, one that would be fatal in the physical realm, and clearly had no intention of releasing her. The Doctor caught the edge of a thought, one of his, and it sang through her: _It feels too good_.

And the Doctor was strong, stronger than most, stronger maybe than even she knew. She could take it. She _wanted_ to take it. "Now who's being obtuse?" she asked, but she wasn’t angry anymore. (Well, maybe a little, but it was a fun sort of anger that stirred the blood and urged action.) And so their minds intertwined, as she closed the physical distance between them.

He had always been better at this than her. It was only in her last few regenerations that she had begun to feel like she understood--and could control--her mind and how she interfaced with others. There was a brief memory of fear, fear she’d had as a little boy called Theta, and she wasn’t quite sure if it was his memory or hers. "You want to hurt me," she murmured, leaning against the bars that separated them. Curling her fingers around the cool metal.

The Master slid from the cell's chair to his knees before her, one hand slipping around the bar near her shin. "Yes."

And the Doctor wanted to let him. (Should she let him?) She didn’t know _why_ she wanted to let him, unless the reason was as simple as that undeniable curl of desire that arose under his intense, perfect focus. He was always such a force, such a heat in her life. (And she was still afraid of him.) Of course, there was some risk, given his skill in mental contact, but the Doctor still had the upper hand, and she was safe enough, even with the inroads he was making into her mind. And wasn't this what she'd been begging him for, over several generations now? (You can have me, just me, but let them go.)

With Missy it had been all verbal fencing and carefully offered gifts, like debating a rival philosopher and trying to befriend an abused animal at the same time. The Doctor had given companionship, understanding, even comfort… but she hadn’t offered herself (himself) to Missy in quite this way. What they were doing now felt more like those moments that always came whenever the Master unleashed one of his deadly schemes. He would declare himself in some grand way, revealing to her his terrible plan--some horror that would enslave worlds or wipe out countless lives--and he would laugh and cavort in his glee that he’d finally, _finally_ beaten her. And the Doctor would look at all that potential destruction and know that those lives and those worlds were only laid on the line because of her, because of the Master’s unending quest to cut her down to his size.

And she’d make the offer. (You can have me if you let them go.)

That kind of capitulation, that compromise, had never been enough. The Master wanted more pain, more suffering—he wanted her to lose everything that he wished she did not want. (He wanted to win, not tie.) In all their lives, he had never accepted the offer… was he truly considering it now?

(Was she?)

Her voice was low, a little rough, when she asked her next question. "Do you think you can?"

"Ah," he sighed, an unmistakable rumble of pleasure in his voice as he pressed his forehead to the bars and stared up at her. "I know I can."

She felt him reach inside her and find (the blossom of her consciousness, buzz of her thoughts, the flow of information) the shape of her mind. And then he _squeezed_.

The Doctor's back arched as he sank into her—thrusting into, and past, the surface of her thoughts like the thick roots of a banyan tree, crowding out all other life but its own. He pressed between an equation she'd been running for days, through the sounds of the room, through the distant annoyance of an itch on her ankle. She wondered (a little wildly) how he would like being compared in her mind to Earth's flora, and laughed, a sharp, pained sound he probably couldn't have misunderstood even if he wasn't curling in through the thought.

She got a sense of him moving through her tastes and her metaphors, could feel how he yearned to destroy them, to overwrite them (or maybe to drown in them). He reached for the familiar places, and she twisted a little in his grip, not resisting, exactly, but not quite submitting either. The tendrils of him scraped along a shallow memory of working on the TARDIS in her last body, _his_ mind preoccupied by Missy. What a strange sensation.

"Oh Missy, you're so fine..." he echoed, pushing in on the memory, leaning on it with all his psychic weight, seemingly for fun.

The thought reverberated with pain, with annoyance, with need. The Doctor hadn't known that body to be interested in lust, but Missy had awakened something. A desire for the Master, both physical and emotional, and deep, fierce curiosity. The Master was a woman. Why? How? Why had the Doctor never been a woman, not once in all this time? He wanted it, craved it in a way he couldn't fully understand. To have Missy, yes, but also to _be_ her.

The Master gasped, delighted. "Were we a little jealous? Did my fashion sense finally outstrip yours? Or just my wit?"

“You're the one who dressed to match me," the Doctor answered.

Missy had always seemed like she was having so much fun. The Doctor had wanted that, wanted to be lively and vivid again. Her memory echoed with the Master's laugh, brightening the spaces between the spines of him. But he didn’t much care for that—his reflexive reply was to tear into her further, claw down into places that might not heal.

"You'd miss me," she whispered, as one side of her mind lit up under his attack. He was digging deep, and she could feel that his intent was to break her down., but on her side it felt more like a tunneling, an attempt to reach the fathomless parts of her. (Journey to the Center of the Doctor.) Her thoughts twisted around the Master within, forced to accommodate the new presence. Such an invasion. And yet so _good_. She threw her head back again, body shivering in horror and delight.

"I wouldn't," he told her, voice quivering with exertion.

It was such a bald-faced lie that the Doctor actually felt sorry for him, a well of sympathy blooming within her, mingling into suspension with her desire for him. A bit alarmed, she shoved the feeling down at once, trying to keep it from anywhere he touched, knowing he wouldn’t thank her for it. It might even drive him away, and she didn't want him to go. She needed him inside her, filling her. Clutched close in ways he couldn’t even recognize. Wrapped up and held, when he believed he was attacking.

She _needed_ to finish.

Searching for a distraction, for a lure, the Doctor offered a more tempting gift instead, proffering it up like a jewel: "I would."

Outside of her mind, she heard a sound, and it took the space between seconds to recognize it as his breath shuddering in his chest. Inside, she could feel how struck he was, how suddenly and utterly consumed--she could have done anything in that moment and he wouldn’t have had the presence of mind to stop her. Greedily, he wriggled deeper, reaching for that shining, indigo-glory admission.

The Doctor held it out. Waited for him to take what she offered, to swallow it down. It was a bribe without consequence, bait without a hook, but even as he reached for it, suspicion began to weave its way in, snaking through the intertwined parts of them, obscuring purpose and dragging at him until he realized what he was doing. She felt annoyance from him, then disgust, and then suddenly he was abandoning her, kicking her emotions aside on his way out, overturning her thoughts like he was wrecking hotel furniture.

The Doctor stumbled backwards, feeling dizzy under the onslaught and, worse, empty without his presence. She should have known better. Self-sabotage was always his most indulgent vice, and of course he wouldn’t allow her to give him something so lovely, even if it was something desperately desired. ( _Because_ he desperately desires it, Doctor you fool.)

She stopped when she bumped into the chair, and stood staring at him. Inside she ached, and her fingers twitched with the desire to draw him back, physically if necessary, to pull him down and in and back where he had been. Her mind and body screamed for completion… but he didn’t even look up. He just passed a few fingers idly through the air (if she’d still been close, he would have been brushing the cuff of her trousers) and rested his forehead against the bars. Closed his eyes, even, shutting her away completely.

“Get out,” he whispered.

The Doctor’s hands balled up into fists. This wasn’t his TARDIS, or even his room. He had no control here. (How had she ceded her control here?) She would stay if she wanted, would needle him some more, or shout at him until they fought, or shift gears and go off on some unrelated topic, filling the room with her incessant babbling. After all, unrelated babbling was _her_ speciality, and it would deny him that solitude whose company he seemed to prefer so much more than hers.

How was he always so _infuriating_? The Doctor wasn’t accustomed to being so easily played, especially in this regeneration (hadn’t realized that having him in her mind would make her so easy to play) and she certainly wasn’t going to let him see how well he had managed it. If she stayed, if she kept badgering him, it would at least result in a good fight.

But then… what would be the point? She had thought she had all the power here, and yet in a way she had none of it. She could control everything except whether or not he would connect with her, and as long as that was what she wanted most, her control meant next to nothing. For a moment she hesitated, not wanting to show any capitulation, then turned sharply on her heel, snatching up her coat as she stalked out. She was still his jailor. Let the condemned sit there for a while and contemplate his fate.

But she only made it three steps down the hall before she staggered, catching herself with one hand against the wall. He wouldn’t even _look_ at her. He’d filled her mind with himself, with his pleasure and his rage, with his desire to hurt and his desire to understand (did he recognize that in himself? she had to wonder.) and then snatched it away in an instant, petulant and selfish, like always. He was so bloody selfish!

And so was she. Every bit as selfish, every bit as hungry for the things she couldn’t have. He would never come with her anymore than she would go with him. Missy had been close, so very deliciously close, but even then… even then when the moment had come, she couldn’t take that last step. All that time together had only been a game.

A break. (Just like this one.)

The Doctor fumbled one-handed with the fastenings of her trousers. Of course she’d noticed before now that she had a certain sexual attraction to the Master. But the intensity of this mental sharing, the heat that came despite (because? It could have been because, how could she tell?) of the pain he inflicted, had been more than she had bargained for. She _ached_ for him, for the pressure of his mind, the taste of his mental touch, the feel of him taking up space inside her. The fabric of her knickers was damp against her knuckles as she pushed her hand down past the waistband, fingers questing. It was a different kind of ache there, a different kind of desire for fullness, but in this moment the two felt the same, or at least inexorably linked.

She took two fingers at once, easily—nothing but heat and slickness there—and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out, unsure if the door was thick enough to keep the Master from hearing it. She thrust urgently, rocked the heel of her hand to give herself that sweet, electric friction. It was the work of moments to reach the peak, sharper and hotter than in any of the times she tried this before. It left her gasping, wet-eyed and trembling for a moment against the wall.

When she came back to herself, she felt instantly foolish. Foolish and silly and vulnerable, standing in the hallway with her hand shoved down in her pants like a desperate human teenager seeking half-satisfaction in her own hand because she couldn’t have the one she really wanted. Awkwardly she pulled her hand free and pushed away from the wall, stumbling down the hall on wobbly legs, on her way to another room and the safety of a second locked door between the two of them.

Hexilionous. She would go to Hexilionous and see the carnival, and then maybe take a spin off to the Frash nebulae and go invent lugeing on one of the ice planets. Or maybe find a rebellion to support on Sherilni Three. Anything but stay here with him.

At least for a little while.


	2. Tacos from El Paso, 1985

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Doctor brings dinner, and that turns out to be a mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this has less porny bits than we expected, but that's because these two insisted on... they're both just difficult, is all. We'll get there, we promise.

As a rule, Time Lords didn’t need to eat as often as humans.

The people of Gallifrey (the ordinary, boring ones who were not offered regeneration cycles or access to the time vortex), ate a few times a day when they could manage it, like most humanoid species. But Time Lords had plenty of genetic advantages built into their DNA, one of them being the ability to store energy efficiently. It took a great deal more time for dehydration and starvation to set in… which was probably why the Doctor hadn’t bothered to feed him yet.

The Master couldn’t be sure whether or not this was another advantage natural to _her,_ stolen and replicated by Tecteun and the founders. It was certainly possible that the Time Lords dreamed it up all on their own, but he hadn’t been able to find any record in the Matrix of what smaller advantages had been engineered by imagination and what had been the gift of the Doctor’s unique genetics. Lost to history and all that.

She was avoiding him.

He knew why, at least in part—he had hurt her. Her anger in his sudden rejection of her mind had made that (dangerously) clear. But it wasn’t a normal hurt this time, the typical betrayal, disappointment, distress. No, she had wanted something from him, and not received it.

Normally, he would find that hilarious, but there were a lot of hours in any given day (especially when there were no actual days at all) and they dragged without her presence. There was no clock hanging up nearby, no chalk to make tallies on the wall. And it wasn’t as though she was being a monk in all this either—he’d felt the vibrations of the TARDIS landing sequence more than once, and then the dematerialization sequence hours later. Who knew who she’d set upon to torment while he waited in this housebound hell she’d created for him.

His assumption that she wasn’t intending to starve him (on purpose, anyway) did eventually bear out, and she arrived one day with one crumpled paper bag in each hand, pacing around to inspect the room as though she had half-expected it to have changed in her absence. “How’re we doing?”

He glared at her from his ugly chair.

“Alright, let’s not do that again,” she said, hoisting a bag and giving it a shake. “You can’t be angry, I brought dinner! Or is it breakfast for you, considering?”

Typical Doctor, trying to pick up as though their last encounter hadn’t ended badly. She was wearing that mask, the one she normally put on for her traveling companions whenever she didn’t want them to suspect that things were going sideways. He couldn’t think why she would expect it to work on him.

Still, the withholding wouldn’t do—if he was ever going to get out of here, he couldn’t have her at arm’s length. And he didn’t like that he couldn’t read her. So he stretched out his consciousness and gave her mind a tentative push, just to see what kind of response he could provoke. (It was petty, but so were they.) What he received in reply had clearly been rehearsed: a firm establishment of boundary and a redirection, like a teacher scolding him for activities that didn’t have anything to do with the class assignment.

Bloody cheek, thinking she could keep him at bay like that.

He grit his teeth at her. “I’m not your pet.”

"As though I could tame you," she said, having the audacity to roll her eyes. She set the bags aside, already distracted. “You are _the Master_ , after all.”

It almost worked, the sound of his name on her lips. Sometimes he wondered if that wasn't the reason he chose it, a form of self-soothing that he could never achieve in isolation. But he was too canny not to see the strings. "None of your pets are tame," he countered. "They’re strays, the whole sorry lot. But you still can't have _me_."

She could have pressed that button on Gallifrey and changed everything. But if she wouldn't destroy him, shouldn't he get the chance to bury her in her own good intentions? The only way forward was to finish what he had started, and to do that, they’d have to make contact again. He slipped past her defenses (easier than it should have been; she was lying to herself about wanting to keep him out), into the house of her mind, and turned this time to the foundation, to ripping up the floorboards. The Doctor's breath hiccuped in her throat as she stumbled forward and grasped his cell bars, bracing against his making himself at home. He heard her say _No_ , though he wasn’t sure if she spoke the word aloud or thought it as her mind wobbled.

"You wanted me deeper." She may not have said as much, but he had _felt_ it, a lack of fulfillment at his withdrawal the last time. Not enough pain, perhaps. Not enough desperation. He would be happy to oblige this time around.

She looked at him, shadowed in the light of her conscious mind, and her lip curled in defiance. “I’m ready.”

The Doctor always did put on a show when she was afraid.

The Master had already made a great mess of the floor, a jagged hole with boards flung everywhere. He sat at the edge of it, feet dangling, and lowered his destructive hands into the abyss below. Her thoughts were all still there, her autonomic functions, her rational processing. But she was ordered like this, manageable. And if he flicked a finger to the left...

It jolted one of her hearts—just a tap and the whole system seized up.

Another tap and she took in more oxygen than usual.

Another and her skin burned for no reason at all.

"Ohhh, that's low," she hissed, slipping to her knees before him. Her pulses, one slightly off for a moment, pounded in their ears. "Getting physical now?"

"Too base for you?" the Master wondered aloud. He vacated his chair and joined her on the floor, moving closer. "I never could remember our rules for this sort of thing." (That was a lie, he remembered all of them, laid out in childhood and rarely deviated from.) In her mind, he grabbed for a mass of wiring that shorted and sparked and made him nauseous.

Sense memory.

What resulted was an assault on the both of them. The taste of someone named Jackie’s cooking (vile); the scent of Sarah Jane Smith’s shampoo (fruity); the touch of Nyssa’s hand (soft and comforting). The damage he could do here was real, and he gave himself a moment to revel in it.

"I remember Nyssa," he said, faux-fondly. "Did she ever recover from the time I stole her father's face and wore it for centuries? Sweet thing."

The Doctor snarled at him and jerked sideways a little, throwing him off balance. The landscape shifted, and her chest heaved with the effort as they came to rest in some poetry she memorized centuries ago. Stanzas and rhythms in alien languages, many no longer spoken, swirled around them as her heartsbeat returned to normal.

The Master groaned. "Why is this here?" He didn't recognize the particular language or the style of poetry, but he'd never been keen on the art form either way. (Unless he was using it to gloat.)

"I liked it," she told him, sounding very much like little Theta of old. "Sometimes that's all the reason you need."

He cringed, then pointed to one particular stanza. "I can't even read this one and I know it's erotic."

She gave him the meaning of it, the rhythm of the lines matching their description of entwined bodies and entwined hearts, the sharing of breath between three people (the normal grouping in the society in which it was written). The Doctor didn't hold back her pleasure in the memory, in the recitation, and he realized that she was waiting on his response. Probably expecting him to break something. He’d give in to the impulse, but that was a little predictable, even for him.

There was a twitch in his jaw, as he scratched a hand down a dingy wall painted with rhyming couplets. "Can we leave now?"

"You were getting a bit fresh," the Doctor said. "I do need my mind to keep working. Why? Would you prefer something else?"

And there it was, the latch to a trap door he’d been searching for. "Something painful," he whispered, as he flipped it open and let the ground give way once more. They dropped into a lake brimming with cold and sorrow—it was every goodbye the Doctor had ever said to her friends, collected and feeding off each other in one soaking mass. Delighted, he aligned his neuro patterns to hers, a voyeur eavesdropping on her pain and taking it in.

_—this core of loss inside of her, dark and clammy and so very easy to sink into. To drown in. The water closed over her head for a moment, and she had to kick hard to get back up long enough to take a breath of hope before sinking back down. This time not all the tendrils that wrapped around her were him. Some were her own dark impulses, grief and shame and self-loathing, promises broken and friends lost, one way or another. She tread water as best she could, her inner gaze seeking out his, only to find him watching dispassionately, unmoved and unimpressed—_

The Doctor tried to speak, but the sorrow filled her throat as surely as a real lake would, swallowing the sound before it could reach him. There were rules for this place, tacked to the wall like a public pool sign: She could look here sometimes (on purpose or because she couldn't help herself), but she would never stay too long. That was the bargain. Not too long, not too deep.

Yet she did not try to leave this time.

_—she could not keep them, no matter how she wanted to or how she tried, and how often had trying only hurt them more, hurt them worse? Some died, others were left broken, or at least more damaged than they were before. Her touch was so often too much for this universe, it was a wonder she didn't realize sooner that she doesn't belong here. Not really—_

He waited, intently, for her guilt to sate him, to appease the hunger he was never permitted to feed. (It had to, it must.) If nothing else would serve, the least she could do was tear herself apart for his amusement. He'd earned this. Earned it via countless lifetimes of humiliation and the reiteration of his own insignificance.

He was nothing. She could be too, if she tried.

But she didn’t try. She just watched him, when he was supposed to be watching her, and let the water hold her. Let the self-loathing creep up her ankles and wind round her calves, like the tentacles of some great sea beast called Despair.

The Master hadn’t expected Despair to be silent. Silent and cold. It would have been boring, if he wasn’t so terribly dissatisfied. He prodded, trying to stir her.

“What are you?”

The Doctor finally did respond, tilting her head, and everything moved in slow motion. The Master felt her grief at Adric's death, the tears that were never shed but nonetheless heartfelt. He heard Donna Noble begging to keep the mind that was killing her. "I'm the Doctor."

He giggled in response, but the sound was uncomfortable and pitchy. It wasn’t supposed to work out like this. It was supposed to feel different, _he_ was supposed to feel different. (He was supposed to win, not tie.) “Still?”

The Doctor gestured slowly, something alike to sleepiness stealing over her. Lethargically, she answered, "This is part of what it means to be the Doctor."

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?”

“Fine. It’s pathetic. _You’re_ pathetic.”

The insult, though clumsy, was meant to rile her. It _should_ have riled her, calling out the deficiencies in her precious feelings. The Doctor just shrugged. She knew it was time to leave this place (the Master felt her mental stopwatch click to zero), and yet she didn’t move. Didn’t shift them, or fight him, just floated there, waiting. It was all wrong. 

“Is this you dealing out lessons, then? The meaning of being the Doctor, the sorrow and the loneliness and distance between you and everyone else, when all you’re doing is rolling about in pity like a chinchilla taking a dirt bath? You’re not _saying_ anything—you’re just getting comfy. I went looking for something real, and you brought me to Rassilon’s Photobooth of Regret.”

She blinked once, her gaze unfocused. Drifting. “I... didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” His tone was sharp, demanding, but she didn’t seem to notice. He had to repeat himself. “Didn’t _what_ , Doctor?”

“You wanted to see. Now you see. It’s not my fault.”

She didn’t sound like she cared much, though or was even paying attention. (Of course she dismissed him now, of all moments, when he should have all the power over her he could ever want.) Any chance of victory was slipping from him even as she slipped deeper into the depths of her own darkness, her mind unmooring, her hair suspended about her in the water like a halo.

“‘Course not. Nothing ever is.”

“Mmm. I’m sorry.”

“No,” he said. “No, you _can't_ be, not _now_.” This wasn’t even a tie—it was losing, in the dullest and most anti-climactic way possible. “You’re doing this out of spite, aren’t you. Do you even realize you’re going to die here?”

That at least got a reaction, albeit a distant one, as a cloudy sort of fear stole over her face. They were out of time, maybe past out of time, and he knew it. She must feel it too. 

She reached out for his hand.

The Master froze. “You said ‘never’.”

"I... did?" She looked confused, but then, she was hardly even there. "But...."

He should leave her. Let her die here in her lake of martyrdom. It would serve her right. The Master desperately wanted to make that choice, wanted to _mean_ that choice, but it was so... subdued. She was just dimming, drifting away, and there was nothing to enjoy. (And what sort of end was that, anyway? More than once he’d _saved_ her from more interesting deaths than this.)

He reached out and brushed their fingertips together, contact enough to bring them somewhere else, a blank space, murky with low grade noise.

In the physical realm, the Doctor’s body swayed forward, shaking with relief.

"You almost _left me there_ , didn't you?" she sputtered in her mindscape. Water ran down her chin and she glared at him, color coming back to her consciousness. The place around them began to gain more focus, coming into low orange and gold hues, taking on the vague shape of a room with a soft floor of earth beneath them. She wiped her mouth, glaring, fury blazing through the spaces in her exhaustion. "I hope you're bloody happy. I've never let _anyone_ do that to me."

"I expected a better showing," he hissed, dismissing her ire with a show of derision, unwilling to profess relief at her speedy recalibration. "You barely put up a fight." Outside of her mind he leaned close, breathed in the air that she exhaled, edged his hands nearer to hers, though careful not to touch. Preoccupied as he was with the physical, he missed it, the moment she found herself again, laid mental hands on her strength and will and dragged them home. It came sooner than he expected. He should have had more time. But she was always so resilient, and so surprising, and so clever. It was as beautiful as it was vexing.

“You want a fight?” The Doctor asked, drawing his attention back inward. (Too slow, too late.) “Fine. Here’s a fight!” And she threw herself at him, consciousness and will at once, a telepathic freight train barreling into him from the distance of a few synapses. Down he went, tumbling, flailing, and she held him there.

Then the Doctor snatched up her grief at his destruction of Gallifrey, and smothered him with it.

The Master screamed. Not because of her pain, but because he could finally find the size of her, the sheer enormity of _feeling_ that she was made up of (chained to), every emotion shoved into a hoarder’s crawlspace, each sitting on the backs of the others in one great, grotesque heap. It wouldn't let him breathe. He lashed out blindly, but there was nothing to strike. He tried to crawl out from under it, but he was pinned to the spot. He truly feared that he would be left there (his penance earning out against the ages), crushed under the weight of her compassion, her joy, her wonder... but he brought all his focus to bear and zeroed in on the feeling she had meant for him, and finally, he was left basking in nothing but her loss. Like a light switch, flipped, he moved from panic to delectation.

"Oh, _Doctor_ ," he sighed. "You really shouldn't have..."

" _You_ shouldn't have," she retorted, shoving at him a bit. "All those people. Some of them children, innocents. People who knew that history no better than you."

“That's a lot of assumptions to make in one go," he drawled. "They might have known. That orphanage that took you in? You don't think they were told?"

He watched her falter. Now _this_ was a proper fencing match. “They couldn’t have.”

"Why not? They would have wanted answers as to why very important Time Lords went dumping you on their doorstep. Think it's fair to assume they had some extra information. They were so good at handling you."

For a moment they were in that barn, and a child was crying in the loft. So lost. So out of place. "They were kind," she said softly.

He remembered that sound, the way she had cried as a little boy, hidden in corners or closets. He had found her more than once, tucked away and swollen-faced. (He used to fix it by making her laugh. Missy had made her laugh, too. But this time around, she didn’t seem to like any of his jokes.) "Why should that matter?"

“I don’t know. It just does.”

The Master tutted. "Sentimentality. Even for the people who lied to you and kept you in the dark."

"I can't hate the way you do," she said, sounding tired. "It's not in me, no matter how much you want it to be."

"And that's what makes you different, is it?" He gave her a little bow. "Brava for you. I'll just continue to _debase_ myself with rage."

She shoved at him again. “Shut up.”

“Or what?” he replied, kicking at her foot.

What resulted was a scrap in her head much like the one they’d had in the Matrix when she’d tackled him to the ground and he’d laughed at the futility of it. He remembered using swords, laser pistols, infinitely more elegant (deadly) weapons against each other over the years, but this one liked to get her hands dirty, even in the psychic sense. It would have been more satisfying in the physical realm, but he enjoyed the blows, the way she grabbed him by the lapels and slammed him back into the ground, scratched at his throat, shoved his face into the dirt. It was worth it to witness her stoop.

Then suddenly, she looked down and caught his eyes, and everything subsided. “Oh, what’s the point?” she said, sliding off of him as the sunset hues of the space grew richer, deeper. She dug a thumb into the mud beside her, pouting like a child.

Whatever she had wanted from him the last time, he could see this wasn’t it. But he’d tried.

“You need to give me a bed,” he said.

“Do you deserve a bed?”

“Define ‘deserve’,” he replied, his expression turning wicked.

She held his gaze for a moment. “Alright. A bed.”

There was silence then, neither of them willing to acknowledge the other. Finally, he asked the question he’d been dreading the answer to. “How long are you planning on keeping me?”

She wrinkled her nose and gave a shrug. “Haven’t decided.”

The sigh he gave was both internal and external. "Taking me prisoner cannot be a regular occurrence just because you fancy yourself a good jailer."

"Seems like a good enough reason to me. Are you hungry?"

“Famished.”

“Then let go.”

A part of her mind caressed his consciousness, startling him with its proximity. He acquiesced, releasing her on a long, slow breath. Then they were staring at each other, mere inches between them, yet now so much farther apart. He had left some gashes there, in her psyche, but if she was hurting she didn’t show it. Instead, she crawled over to the table by the door and retrieved the food she’d meant to deliver at the start.

She shoved one of the bags through the bars for him, opening the other on her side. “Tacos.”

The Master blinked. “Where did you go for that?” These were carry out bags—she didn’t whip them up in the TARDIS kitchens.

“El Paso, 1985.”

The Master was starting to reply when he caught it. The tilt of her head, the light in her eyes... there was a story behind the choice, and if he were one of her human puppies, he would, of course, ask. It was clearly what she wanted. Which was precisely why he chose not to say anything, turning his attention to the contents of the bag. He was halfway into unwrapping some foil labeled _carnitas_ when she said:

“I’m missing something, aren’t I? Something massive.”

If he had been capable, he would have rolled his eyes all the way back into his skull and left them there. “You usually are.”

“You could tell me,” she said softly (and he could _feel_ her stare trying to crack him open), “just this once.”

“You could work it out,” he said, meeting her gaze. “Just this once.”

But neither wish was fulfilled. They ate in the deafening silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will have Deals! Galactic creation events! The TARDIS's rainforest floor! There might be questionable conversations about harnesses? GUESS WE'LL SEE.


	3. The Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Deal is struck. A series of vignettes about what comes after, involving: galactic birth, bathrobes, and giant lizards.

Eventually, the Doctor had to let him out of his cell.

Keeping him locked up (however satisfying) wasn’t the point—this break was supposed to be for both of them. And that meant they had to at least _attempt_ to coexist, to share the same spaces, to (at least in a limited capacity) trust each other. And _that_ meant that the Doctor had to come up with some kind of arrangement, one that she thought might suit them both. Besides, if she didn’t give him a bit of autonomy on the TARDIS, she’d be tethered to his needs the whole time, and that would get really irritating. She’d have to keep bringing in food, and eventually he’d have to use the loo, or take a shower, and she couldn’t very well escort him under spray and watch him the whole time. (No, she did not need to think about that. _Stop thinking about that_.) This was just the most reasonable way to go about it.

In her head, she started calling it The Deal. All she had to do was present The Deal to the Master in the most logical and helpful way possible… and hope that he didn’t reject it outright, either from being withholding on principle, or from that constant, daft need to indulge his pride.

It was hard to tell what he was thinking, sitting there on the bed she’d given him, a book loose in his hands. When she’d come in, she had thought he was reading it, but a second glance had confirmed that he was actually destroying it, methodically tearing out pages one by one and letting them fall to the floor. And as she stood before him and began outlining The Deal, he started up again, tearing slowly, deliberately making the longest and most frustrating ripping sound possible with each leaf.

“I want to propose a cease fire.”

He was watching her out of the corner of his eye, continuing his idle destruction without pause or comment, but at least he was listening. She put her hands on her hips, the image of someone strong and practical who was definitely not fantasizing about reaching through the bars and throttling him. “Look. We both know that you’ll find a way out of there, sooner or later. But we also know that it will take you a while, and you’ll be really bored besides. So what if, instead, we make a deal? I’ll let you out, give you the run of the TARDIS, and you agree to stay. No trying to escape, no doing anything horrible. Just… for a while.”

It was the words ‘run of the TARDIS’ that caught his attention. His hand paused just for a moment, and his gaze flickered around the room before returning to her. But what he said was;

“‘Doing anything horrible’ is pretty much the family motto. I’ve got t-shirts with that printed on. Broad brief, even for you.”

“Well obviously no taking over the TARDIS,” she told him. “No trying to land us anywhere and escape, and if we do land someplace, you’re on my side, doing things my way. No guns, no murder, no trying to take over other people’s planets and set yourself up as emperor.” He whimpered performatively at that distinction, but it was a moot complaint; she wasn’t planning on seeing anyone else, or even leaving the Vortex. The universe just had a way of intruding on her at the oddest moments. Better to be safe. (As safe as this could be, anyway.)

“And in exchange, you’d give me full run of this place?”

There it was again, that spark of interest. Still, remembering all the horrible things he’d done to the TARDIS over the course of their lives, the Doctor thought it best to have restrictions here, too. “Almost. No access to critical systems unless I’m there—no point in giving you more temptation than you can handle—and a few of the bedrooms are private. Like my room.”

That last bit was a diversion. Strictly speaking, she didn’t have a room designated as ‘hers.’ Normally it was part of the process of getting to know a new regeneration—pick an outfit, check out the TARDIS’s redesign, pick herself a new bedroom or suite and kit it out according to her new tastes. But even though she should have known what her tastes were by now, the Doctor had found that she didn’t know what to do with a bedroom. She had definite opinions on the tools she liked to use, the styles and eras of machinery she preferred to surround herself with, but when it came to furniture and wallpaper and linens it was just… nothing. Mostly she’d just kip wherever she was when she realized she was tired, like a workbench or the steps of the console room, or just lay down in the first unused bedroom she could find. But he’d be curious about her room, and looking for that might keep him out of those other spaces.

Another page drifted slowly to the floor, dropped from those cruel, beautiful fingers.

“That’s a lot of conditions for me. What about yours?”

“I’m willing to negotiate if you have other terms you’d like to add.”

She almost had him. The Doctor tried not to look nervous, but it showed anyway, in her eyes and the corners of her mouth, in the slightest change of her breath that only a Time Lord like him would be sensitive enough to notice. The Master dragged the moment out, long enough that she started to prepare herself for further frustration. And disappointment. But eventually, he asked, “Can I accept now and negotiate later?”

Clever. Bad. (So like him.) The Doctor cocked her head. "I suppose," she said, suspicious but game nonetheless. She would take a victory, even a suspect one, to make this work.

*

Missy had enjoyed working together, side by side on the TARDIS. But the Doctor knew better than to assume that this Master would feel the same, or would welcome her invitations. These things could always change from one regeneration to another, after all, and the Master was the only Time Lord she knew who was as unpredictably changeable as the Doctor herself. She _appreciated_ that about him, wondered sometimes if her difficulty with regeneration hadn’t rubbed off on him a little. (The drums were an easy scapegoat, but if the Doctor was being honest, her own influence probably was just as powerful, if not more so.) This version of the Master seemed to like puzzles, and making things work (an engineer, like her?) but perhaps some of that was ruined for him when he’d hacked the Matrix. It had just been for fun, he’d said, but his quest for amusement (diversion) had led to his very sense of self being torn down around him. These things left scars (psychic scars, darting eyes, the pain in his hearts) and the Doctor had seen them in him, even if she didn’t fully (so close she could taste it, yet always falling short) understand.

So she decided not to make any specific suggestions, or to say anything to him at all. Instead, she started leaving broken items and strange equipment lying about, and waited to see what would happen. If he would notice. (If he would care.) And sure enough, a day or two later, she stepped into the console room and found him sitting in the alcove of hexagonal stairs (the same ones she had watched his holographic message from, which was disorienting), fussing with a static converter.

The Doctor was very careful not to look approving.

She padded around the console in stockinged feet, checking readings and stabilizations. It wasn’t that she didn't trust him (that was The Deal), it was just that the console could be tempermental, and change or shift without anyone touching it. (Or because someone touched it.) When the biscuit chute helpfully offered up its wares, she took one, munching away as she worked and letting it settle some of the jittery nerves inside her. Good old TARDIS, always knowing what she needed.

“You’ve been poking about,” she observed after a time. He couldn’t do much besides observe, as long as the biolocks were on, but she could see traces of his presence. “Find anything interesting?”

"I found that Elvis has left you a truly embarrassing number of messages that you’ve never checked," he answered, not looking up. "Why give him the mobile if you're not going to pick up?"

"I pick up sometimes! He's just so needy." (Also, she may have forgotten for a bit.)

The Master leaned back against the step behind him, propping himself up on his elbows, and the Doctor risked a glance in his direction. "I'd have thought you'd be used to needy by now," he said.

And he looked... good, like that. Not posed, just comfortable and in possession of both himself and the room. The Doctor wondered if he had practiced before she came in. (She would have. But then, she was awkward this time around.) “He’ll be fine. I’ll drop by on his birthday.”

"So your presence is a gift, then?" His feet shifted, configuring his legs in another careless sprawl.

“Yep!” She smiled brightly at him, pleased, but when he just stared blankly in response, she slipped into a pout. “Aw, come on. It sort of is. Admit it.”

“You’re not keeping me here to agree with you.”

Deflated, she turned back to the console, flipping a few switches. There was a bit of cosmic dust out there, best to give it some room. Suddenly, something brand new popped up on the scanner. “Oh, brilliant!” she exclaimed, with a delighted little whoop. “How would you like to go see the birth of a galaxy?”

She was already plugging in the coordinates and pulling the necessary levers before his answer (something rather ruder than “no thank you, Doctor”) came, so dash him anyway. It was happening. An easy adjustment to send them hurtling back about ten thousand years, and then off to the left, to find the galaxy that would later be named Deidaiado by the people who would call it home. Right now, however, it was just gasses and energy and lumps of matter, a swirling spiral of potential and yearning.

The Doctor rushed to the TARDIS doors and threw them both open, giving enough space so that they could both get a good view.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Look at that. That is first rate, it really is.”

Looking out, nothing but space between her and this miracle of creation, she easily got lost in the collisions, the beauty of matter and gas and light all dancing together. It must have been full minutes before she thought to say anything else. Or maybe she didn’t think at all, and the thought just seeped out of her, like joy. Like need.

Like truth.

“It's like us, in a way. I mean, the universe never really dies. It just changes. Remakes itself through heat and colliding atoms, changing its face, its structure, its hearts…. But it's still the same universe, really. Spinning on and out, old and yet new, every time."

“You mean it’s like _you,_ ” came a bitter voice, right beside her ear.

The Doctor caught herself, just in time, and did not jump at his surprising proximity. She wanted to argue but knew that wouldn’t work, and anyway the heat of his body directly behind her (which she hadn’t noticed until just this very now) was terribly distracting. Desperate to have a reply, she came back with, “Did anyone ever tell you the old fable about the Solitract, when you were little?"

“The conscious universe that Granny Five always nattered on about?”

She was surprised that he remembered the name; her tendency to dub some of the orphanage attendants as grandmothers had always exasperated him, even though it never seemed to bother any of her grannies overmuch. "The Solitract is real. I met it. Found a portal into an anti-zone and the Solitract on the other side. It wanted to be friends with us. It said it misses us. Our universe." The Doctor sniffed. “Couldn't stay, obviously. We were just too incompatible. But it was truly amazing, while it lasted.”

“You… met. A universe.” He sounded properly bewildered for a change, and it made her want to punch the air in triumph. She played it cool, though. Didn’t even turn around.

" _That's_ a bit like us though, isn't it?" She watched as space dust and clumps of debris fell in on themselves, in and in and in, crashing together into friction and fusion. "Always wanting to get back to each other, always repelled, hurting each other even when we don't want to."

As she had guessed, he couldn’t let that sentiment go unchallenged. With his chin over her shoulder (and she wondered what he was doing with his hands, if he had to tuck them behind his back, or if they were hovering close, nearly touching), his lips were practically against her ear when he replied, "You think I don't hurt you on purpose?"

"I know you do," she said softly, watching the heart of a star begin to form. "Sometimes I hurt you on purpose, too. You can make me so terribly angry."

The shift behind her was both pronounced and the complete opposite of what she would receive from anyone else; he was relaxing, somehow pacified by the admission. In that moment, she almost wished their minds were linked again, so that she could know how that confession felt to him. Instead, she kept her eyes fixed on explosive matter and the random acts of chance that kept their universe running, and let his physical presence warm her in a different (but hardly less satisfying, she was beginning to realize) way.

*

At some point, the Master decided he needed a dressing gown, and after a bit of searching he managed to find the wardrobe room again. Technically it was still in the same spot as before, but some of the corridors leading to it had shifted since he’d walked them in his guise as O (possibly they were shifting now, her TARDIS deliberately misleading him). The ridiculous place wasn’t really a room at all, but a series of large, railless platforms, covered in racks of garments like the backstage of a theater and, for some reason, suspended over a five-story-deep chasm as though it was built for the Empire in Star Wars. Strategically, the Master approved of anything so perfectly designed to throw people to their deaths from, but it was so impractical a choice, so stupidly random, that it was also a bit painful to look at.

He was just sorting through a collection of (unfortunately) brightly colored bathrobes when he heard the Doctor’s voice drifting up from somewhere below. Unable to figure out who she was talking to (herself? the TARDIS?) he gave in to curiosity and followed the sound, making his way down the spiral staircase until he found himself in the atmospheric section, where everything pulsed with warm lights and the soft steam of condensers. There was a lot of exposed coral here, the TARDIS's native bones twisting and spiraling through the walls and circuitry, and it gave what should have been a very neat and precise room full of high tech equipment a wild, dangerous feel.

The Doctor herself was suspended upside down by a harness, busily hammering away at one of the compresor biomes. "Oh, hi, fancy meeting you down here," she said when she noticed him, and her voice was just a little too high and a little too fast. The Master hesitated, but she continued blithely on despite his silence, twisting around to look at him. “Sorry, did I make it too hot? I redid the rainforest floor a while back, but I never got the humidity quite right. Wanted to see if a little boost on the ultrasonics might give a better dew point ratio, but then I noticed some of the flush valves on the recycler were looking a bit old, so I got started replacing them and figured while I was here I’d clean out the interior calcium deposits and, well, this one got stuck. I’ve been trying to goose it for the past twenty minutes, but it wouldn’t budge, even when I said pretty please, so now I’ve resorted to good-old elbow grease.” She held up the bi-wrench that she had just been using (incorrectly) as a crowbar. “Didn’t mean to get so distracted.”

He stepped in, barely registering the endless explanations at the sight of her trussed up like a goose in a shop window. Their faces were almost level, her hair reaching for the grated floor, gaze hidden by a pair of round welding goggles, her feet caught against the wall for stability. Something about this was (niggling)… off. "What's a rainforest floor good for?" (That should keep her talking.)

“Well, it gives the monkeys a place to hang out. It's good for party games. And you know, there’s just something about the air of a proper, real rainforest. I can produce it down here exactly the same, scientifically speaking, but somehow it just never tastes right.”

"Don't the roots get stuck in the machinery?" he asked, properly distracted now, eyeing the contraption, tracing the joined pieces that held her in place, how they merged. The thing didn’t make any sense, the way it was strung up—too many straps that weren’t being used, too many hooks, too much exposed. It looked like it was intended for multi-purpose positioning, and plenty of the extra bits had been jerry-rigged by her to hold special tools.

But that would mean...

_No._

"Only occasionally. They and the TARDIS seem to understand each other, for the most part."

He reached up without warning to unhook the part of the harness that kept her the wrong side up. She would have flipped rather sharply (he had been tempted, it would have been extremely entertaining), but instead his hand came up to catch the small of her back and lower her down easy, until she was properly oriented towards the floor. Her lips parted in what might have been surprise, but he pointed up at the spot where the contraption was bolted to a crossbeam and started talking before she could get a word in: "You know this lovely contraption isn't intended for mechanical work, right?"

"What?” The Doctor glanced up too, nose wrinkling in perplexity. “It isn't?"

He shook his head.

"Works great for it," she mused, and ran a hand through her hair to get it sorted. With it brushed back like that he could see the earring that dangled from her left ear. "Sturdy. Versatile. You can get into any angle you want. And it's surprisingly comfy." 

The way she said the word ‘comfy’, like she was talking about a nest of pillows or a well-upholstered recliner, was making this whole line of inquiry utterly surreal.

"Oh, I’d imagine it’s meant to be comfortable,” he agreed, doing a spin around her (she’d never been happy with how he picked that up from her over the centuries, the kinetic motion, the need to fidget and fill the space) to get the three-hundred-sixty degree view. “And to cover _a lot_ of angles."

"Right, which makes it perfect for getting into all the tight spots," the Doctor said. He watched her brow furrow above her goggles as she tried to make sense of it. She pointed at him with the bi-wrench. "You're deliberately not laughing at me, which I’m just now discovering is way more concerning than you laughing at me."

“Only just?” He snuck his fingers into the harness, hooking beneath the strap secured about her waist, dragging her up close. He could see her winding up to tell him off, but he kept going. “Ah-ah, focus now. What’s it for?”

The question was nagging enough that she actually listened to him. She thought for a moment, then her face lit up. "Acrobatics!"

“Not flexible enough. Too many moving parts.”

“Have you ever been interplanetary bungee jumping? It's absolutely mad. I threw up both times.” Not a guess—she’d probably considered the idea for a moment then discarded it. Bringing it up anyway meant she was stalling. Stalling and working very carefully to make sure that her inner thighs didn’t brush his hips (which they could, easily in this position). Her free hand was gripping one of the ceiling straps rather too tightly, and she had caught her lower lip in her teeth. A gesture of frustration, no doubt.

“You are absolutely no fun when you’re this clueless,” the Master sighed.

But his eyes went straight to her mouth.

She released her lip abruptly, but it did little to remedy the situation—now it was flushed and swollen, and all he could look at. (The Doctor was always like this, playing the fool, as though it was impossible to conceive of a reality in which she used all those cues purposefully, and it was a _lie_ , he had a millennia of proof to that end.) Still, if her sudden intake of breath was anything to go by, the other shoe had finally dropped. Probably from one of those wardrobe platforms above them.

“No. Is it? _No._ ” She tilted her head back, considering her trusty sex harness-swing-hybrid-mess-of-a-thing. There was a bit of flush in her cheeks though. (Time Lords shouldn’t blush.) "Seems like it would be hard to keep clean.”

“Bit beside the point,” he told her mouth.

“S’pose that’s true.” Her bafflement eased then, to be replaced by a wry amusement that twisted that mouth up in alluring ways. “I should be more careful about where I knick things. Probably ruined someone’s holiday.” He was about to press in closer, or maybe drag her forward, (how could he decide in this moment, with all his attention consumed by her lips?) when she suddenly pushed the goggles up onto her forehead, and there were her eyes, questing and inquisitive as always.

They stopped him cold. Like the games human children played with blindfolds on, leading one another with sound or directions or hand-in-hand, this had been a game... and then suddenly it wasn’t. Blindfold off. He released her, and she grabbed onto a lever in the wall to stop from swinging about, but she looked… puzzled. (Upset? What for?)

“You shouldn’t talk to yourself,” he said, backing away quickly. “People end up wondering if you’re mad.”

“They do that anyway,” she told him. “The TARDIS is used to it. You probably are, too.”

One foot behind the other, step by step until he reached the staircase. But as he turned to leave, to climb back up and away from all this, she tried one more time (to reach him, maybe, or to figure out what had just happened):

“Want to go see the rainforest floor?”

He paused, one hand wrapped around the railing, drums thundering in his skull. They often did when the Doctor got (when he let her get) too close, even though they weren't supposed to (be able to) make that sort of comeback. “Tomorrow.”

Apparently that was enough to appease her, and her response was cheerful. “Great! Bright and early, and make sure you eat a big breakfast. Which I only say because I always forget.”

He left before she could continue, knowing her chatter would only exacerbate his mood. Before the day was out, he’d filled a rubbish bin with those useless colorful bathrobes and set them on fire.

*

Given that the Doctor hadn’t had the presence of mind to arrange _where_ they were going to meet, and given that neither of them were keeping to the kind of schedule that would really indicate a specific “night” and “morning” (she only really bothered keeping track when she had humans onboard, since they were so prone to cognitive problems when they didn’t get sleep, not to mention the hallucinations) she had decided to finish her repairs and then go straight to the console room.

Once there she mostly just hovered anxiously and waited for the Master to come find her.

Something had happened down there, and the Doctor didn’t understand it. She _hated_ not understanding things. (Well that wasn’t quite true. Sometimes not understanding things could be great fun because then you got to figure them out, and people could watch you figure them out and be impressed. But this was the Master. Different rules applied.) He’d been intrigued, playful even, and her face still burned a little when she thought about his hand against her back. He’d touched her. Just like that, easy and familiar, supporting her when he could have let her fall. (He always let her fall, even when he wasn’t engineering it himself.) Why didn’t he? And what had changed so much in a moment that he’d suddenly abandoned the game _he_ had started?

She was missing something massive. It made her skin itch.

By the time he showed up, looking cool and disaffected (a show surely) and freshly showered (he smelt of bergamot soap, and there was just a hint of dampness flattening the front of his hair), the Doctor had worked herself back up into something of a manic state.

“Silly to take a shower before visiting a rainforest!” she told him, all in a rush, as he watched her fill the pockets of her coat (a different one than her usual, designed for rain, but still long and well-fit to her) from a box in the corner. “For the birds. Come on!” She threw a second raincoat at him before dashing up the hexagonal steps and down the hallway. She heard (felt) him hesitate, then sigh and follow.

It took walking the equivalent of two city blocks and hiking up a long, winding staircase lit by dim, silvery sconces to reach the entrance to the rainforest floor. When she opened the heavy door to let him in, it was the air that hit them first, like a brick wall of water. Then she stepped into the room and onto mossy ground, the Master following her, peering around at the greenery and scanning the dark crevices between trees, perhaps looking for the animal sounds he could hear in the distance. 

There was a lot to look at. The ceilings here were high enough to make the space look like another world, and the trees were varied but all quite tall, while all sorts of wild, leafy vegetation packed in between, including many types of flowers. The sounds of birds, not to mention distant monkey calls, echoed through the space.

“I spent a lot of time making sure everything in here would get along with everything else," the Doctor told the Master, uncertain if the information was helpful (or welcome) but babbling on anyway, unable to stop herself. As they wound their way down the path, a few white bats paused in feasting on some long, tubular fruits to watch the two Time Lords go by. “And nothing too poisonous to humans of course. A few types of frogs maybe. And Bessie's in here somewhere.”

“Your car?” The Master frowned, looking dubious. 

"That’s right, I named her after the car," the Doctor (surprised at how pleased she was by his memory) exclaimed. “She's a bit shy, but if we’re lucky, she might come out to say hello.”

"I'll be so very well behaved,” the Master drawled in response, and didn’t sound like he meant it at all.

The air was thick around them as they pressed in deeper, protected from a bit of a drizzle by their raincoats. The Doctor paused from time to time to comment on this animal or that bit of flora, but did her best to also give him time to take in the space, to peek through the greenery and mull the whole thing over. At one point, she reached out and caught his hand—only to direct his attention, mind, but somehow she found herself unable to let go of it. Almost as if letting go would acknowledge what she had done.

(He hadn’t liked that she took off the goggles.)

The Master’s voice startled her out of her reverie, but she could probably blame that on the deep croaking sound off to their right somewhere. 

“You’re storing sunlight, then? To use on the flora?”

“I am.” And wasn’t it nice to have someone on board who could appreciate the technical challenges of running something like this. “I've also been teaching some of the more receptive plants to eat from an enriched soil. It's a really interesting experiment.” He made a noncommittal noise, and his palm was sweaty in hers. Oh no, wait. Maybe it was _her_ palm that was sweaty. “There's also a canopy level you can check out later, if you like. I pipe the sunlight in and I've filled it with butterflies so it looks a bit like Mirkwood up there. Really magical."

“What’s a Mirkwood?”

"From _The Hobbit!_ ” She blinked at him. “Surely you’ve read _The Hobbit_? And _The Lord of the Rings?_ ”

He shook his head. “Never bothered with that one.”

“Well.” Honestly. “You should. I mean, it's brilliant. And so are the butterflies! I gathered them from sixteen different planets.”

And then she saw it, off to the left behind two tree trunks, and paused, crouching a little. “Oh, wait. Hold up.”

“What?” Unwilling to play along, he just peered over her head. The Doctor tugged him closer and pointed off between two thick trunks.

"Right there. You see?" There was hardly anything _to_ see for a moment, and then what might have looked to him like a bit of reflection on a pool or a wet leaf suddenly blinked and revealed itself to be a giant green eye. "There she is."

The Master dropped down beside her then, staring. "How did you get _that_ on board?"

"With great difficulty." The Doctor grinned. "Hey there, Bessie. Hey, girl. Wanna come say hello?"

The Master was very still beside her. 

"I think she'll like you!" the Doctor told him, reassuringly. "Probably. Almost definitely. Come on, girl. Are you hungry? I brought snack bait.” She dug her free hand into her pocket, coming up with handfuls of the heavy seeds she’d stuffed in there earlier and scattering them about. “Alright. Wait for it..."

“Wait for what?” he hissed, pressing closer (She forgot sometimes that he only liked his own scheming, and was never much a fan of her surprises.) Her voice (tinged with the feelings that came bubbling up at the press of him into her side) came off a bit mad.

"The birds."

It only took a few moments, and then three big birds came swooping down from the foliage above, bringing a scattering of water droplets and leaves with them. They were ugly, dinosaur-like creatures, with heavy thick bills, and they pecked at each other as much as the seeds, making harsh screeching noises. And then, just as suddenly, the trees themselves shifted, making way for something the size of a truck that was pushing through the foliage. It moved fast, despite its size, and snapped up two birds in a moment. The third shot off back into the treetops with an angry shriek.

"Hey there, Bess," the Doctor murmured, as the giant lizard turned its head to look at them through an eye the size of a dinner plate.

"Why?" the Master whispered. "What would possess you to keep that?"

"What? She's an avivore. Not dangerous to us, unless you decided to wear a feathered headdress or something. And the femaytho are an absolute pest, they multiply like anything and poop _everywhere._ She's helping me out. Aren't you, my darling?" She stepped closer, leaning in to stroke a hand down the nose. “And she would've died if I hadn't brought her here. So it’s a symbiotic relationship."

The giant beast lowered its head towards them, and the Doctor reached out to slide her fingers across the scaled brow. "Come on. Say hello."

“ _Absolutely_ not.”

"Come on," she wheedled, giving him an eager look. "I'm certain she'll like you. Promise."

He edged forward half a step. “You're just hoping she bites me in half, and I'll regenerate into a more reasonable me.”

He got a laugh for that, she couldn’t help it. "That's more a you-move than a me-move, Master Throw-Me-Off-A-Radio-Dish-Because-I-Wasn't-Into-You-Enough.”

“I threw you off that dish because you were an insufferable, pompous nag that time around,” he corrected. Bessie blinked at the Master, and turned her head closer. He looked over at the Doctor once more (irate and possibly plotting her demise), then held his breath and dragged his fingertips down the bridge of Bessie’s nose, suspicion etched into his brow.

Bessie made a rumble in her throat, a sound not unlike a purr, and her eyes closed halfway as she leaned into his hand. The Doctor saw him fix on that giant green eye and soften, seemingly hypnotized.

"See. Told you she'd like you."

"Trust her judgement, do you?"

The Doctor steeled herself and took a risk. "Well. I like you, too. Maybe she trusts mine."

It was a long pause before he had anything to offer on that account. “I keep thinking… there must be something I could do. Something that you wouldn’t forgive, ever. If I managed it, we’d both be free of this. Of each other.”

She licked her lips, watching him watch the giant iguana. The creatures, called zidoriats by the native peopleoids (before human settlers arrived and nicknamed them giant iguanas), were normally peaceful beings, only a danger to birds and the occasional nest full of eggs. But this one, when the Doctor first found her, had lost her baby to some illness or accident, and for a creature that only ever gave birth once in all the thousands of years it lives, the loss had been too much to bear.

Most zidoriat mothers, the doctor learned, died of their grief soon after the death of an offspring. This one, in her pain, had turned violent, attacking other zidoriats, local animals, even farms and towns. The Doctor had only just been able to save her from being put down by a hunting party. She had managed to connect with the creature, despite its lack of complex sentience, and offer some semblance of company. Bessie had agreed to come live on the TARDIS, accepted what comfort the Doctor could provide her.

The Doctor would never tell the Master all this, of course, especially after insisting that the two would get on. Still, she suspected that Bessie could sense it.

"I suppose you'd be offended if I said I'm sorry," she said. "I wish I could set you free, if that's really what you want."

“You’re not a good liar.”

"I am not lying," she told him. "I'm just selfish."

That got him to look at her. Unfathomably, he smiled, though it was not a kind expression. "When did you start to admit that?"

"It started with pinstripes. Worked on it a lot in the last body."

“I spent a lot of quality time with that one,” he pointed out, “and I don’t remember him bringing that up.”

Well, that was part of it.” She leaned back against the trunk of a very large tree. “Confronting, learning not to hide from the wooly parts of myself. I was a runner for a long time. Still am, maybe, but I'm trying to be better.”

“Be fair, Doctor,” he said, laying a hand on Bessie’s nose again, thoughtlessly, “if you didn’t run, how would I chase you?”

Her breath caught a little. She bit her lip. Rolled the dice. "Did you want to? Right now?"

It was as though she’d armed a bomb right in front of him. His eyes glittered with skepticism (but maybe hope as well). He nodded.

The Doctor's chest heaved. "Well it's my TARDIS, so it doesn't seem fair to ask for a head start." A moment passed. And then another. 

She turned and bolted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger! Sorry!
> 
> Next chapter: a Chase Scene. Also, porn finally happens. We promise.


	4. Brain Full of Peacocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Chase Scene, with the fallout that usually entails.
> 
> Or maybe unusually entails. Depends on the sort of chases you're accustomed to, probably.

The Master watched her go, taking not one step to follow. (Chasing had nothing to do with speed, not really—people always forgot that.) Instead, he listened for the sounds of her retreat, then gave Bessie a salute and moved in the opposite direction, strolling back the way they’d come. By the time he had reached the entrance to the floor and tossed his raincoat by the door, she'd got an excellent headstart. But then, he already knew that the other side of this floor was just above the pool. So that’s where he headed. 

On his arrival, all was quiet, but the Master was confident enough in his guess that he lowered himself into a green plastic chair to wait. Ninety-two seconds later, there was a thunk and squeak in the corner, then a flash of hair. He peered over, only to realize that the tubing he had assumed was for ventilation was actually... a slide. (He should have guessed, really, given the absolute lunacy of her blueprint choices and the way she indulged this old machine.) He deduced that the slide must have run from the far side of the rainforest floor down in a spiral past the pool room and onward to the floor below. A bit of searching revealed a hatchway on this floor as well, another entry point to the slide, and after a moment’s consideration the Master swung his feet over the edge and slipped into the winding darkness. 

The room he emerged into was rather dark as well, except for some tubing and small bulbs subsumed by water, glowing up from the floor. So… a second pool room, apparently, perhaps an old one that had been abandoned in favor of the more spacious one above (or reserved for raves, possibly, given all the neon). Crouching in the dark, he listened, and was rewarded shortly by a squawk off to his left, and a voice whispering fiercely.

“Oh, come on! Hush now. What are you even doing in here? Get off! Ruddy peacocks….”

"Betrayed by your fauna?" the Master called, stalking slowly toward the ruckus. "That sounds about right."

"How do you know it's me she's squawking at?" the Doctor asked. Then, "Oh. Right, because I just spoke and gave myself away."

He thought he could almost make her out at the other end of the room, partially obscured by a tarp at the opposite side of the pool. There was no door back there (or anywhere, that he could see), so he wasn’t quite sure what her move was meant to be. The neon flickered, garish and distracting, casting strange shadows.

The Doctor shifted again, which was only going to give him a more precise sense of position. (Too obvious. What was she playing at?) "This is very Sherlock and Moriarty of us. Have you seen the Cumberman series?"

“No.”

“There’s a big showdown by a pool.”

"And how does it end?" he asked, edging closer.

"Well, Moriarty gets a phone call and decides not to kill everyone that day after all." She took a very loud step—she was definitely trying to draw him in.

“That’s a shame,” he said, trying to make out the tarp’s purpose, if it was covering a larger mass that she was hiding behind, or just strung up at random.

"Would've thought you'd relate!" she said, leaping suddenly upright. The Master heard rather than saw her flip a long lever, and then she ran an arc, just out of his reach, to a rope ladder that had fallen from the ceiling, suspended over the pool. She jumped, catching onto it with one hand. "See ya!"

It was an absurd exit, but she made it look very daring all the same. The Master didn’t give her the gratification of calling after her, turning instead to look for his own way out of the space. There was only one opening in the entire hall, a low doorway that looked like a cupboard, but when he tugged on the handle, it opened up on a stairwell. He crawled through and began his trek upward, reaching a steel slab with a switch plate on its right after a two-flight climb.

Figuring this was as good as any other door, he gave it a go. On the other side he found a room full of geodes and stone, something of a collection. (He had called himself a hoarder, but they were truly two of the kind on that score and they both knew it.) The Doctor clearly hadn’t been back to check on this lot in a long while—one of the stones was beginning to eat the others.

Easy though it would have been to get drawn in by that oddity, he pressed on, passing through an entrance on the opposite side of the room and into a new hall, this one with proper doorways, probably bedrooms. A little cleaning robot trundled down the hallway towards him, humming to itself. It carried a small compartment hung off one side where it had collected lost items, a few gears and pieces of wire, a baseball cap, a collection of windchimes inscribed with symbols, a soft slipper with a face stitched onto it.

"What are you doing here?" the Master asked, crouching down to inspect the thing. It wasn't Gallifreyan in origin, so she'd clearly picked it up (or maybe built it?) somewhere else. He took a look at the slipper with a face, a relic of clothes portraiture from the 37th century (hideous era), and chucked it away despite the whir of protest the move elicited.

"Hope you're planning to incinerate this lot," he said, standing again and stepping around the robot. "Don't let it gather in the closets." He opened a door and found a billiard room, all fine wood and leather. (Had to be left over from a much earlier incarnation, he wondered if she even knew it was still there…) The cues stacked up against the wall and the balls littered across the green felted table indicated a game never finished, left abandoned.

The little robot followed him in, flashing a question in simple binary: _You are lost?_ He was tempted to shoo it away, but realized that would be a mistake. (The Doctor never refused aid from friendly little things.) "Want to tell me where that ladder in the second pool room leads?"

He had to wait while the robot processed the request. _Found. One lost man. Delivery assigned. Come._

It puttered away down the hall and up a short staircase, rather slowly. Turning down a second hall brought them to a lovely English garden that smelled of roses, with rows of doors popping up between the bushes. It pointed with one of its long, dexterous tentacles upward to a small cupboard door on a terrace overlooking the space. _There._

What a strange sub level. He wondered if she kept those roses blooming constantly. "Lovely," he said, giving the thing a pat and looking about. There were more doorways here, more places for the Doctor to hide. He could smell her, but not precisely enough to know where she'd gone. And then there, at the end of the foliage row... one door was ajar. (Always the simplest things that caught her out.) He headed toward it and poked inside.

It was a bright, spacious bedroom, light from the faux window mimicking Earth sunlight almost perfectly. One door led to a bathroom, another opened up into a long hallway, illuminated by string lights running along the ceiling. It smelled a little old, as if no one had let it air out in many years, mold and curled milk being the most noticeable of the mixture.

The Master reached up to tangle a hand in the hanging lights. "Really, Doctor, clean your room," he muttered. Not that he thought this specifically was her room; it definitely wasn’t. (He had to stumble across that eventually, though.)

The air conditioning shifted, a faint whirring as systems turned over, and the scents coalesced in a different way. The smells of ripening and ageing cheeses blew up toward him, hundreds of different varieties distinguishable to his sensitive Gallifreyan nose. It was so potent that he reeled backward a step, but he chose to press onward, making it to the end of the hall and through the doorway on the other side, where he found a huge, cavernous room with arching stone ceilings shot through with veins of TARDIS coral. Cheese wheels were stacked against the walls, but also around areas of the floor, in between small tables and comfortable old chairs. There were a few bottles of wine on a rusty bar cart, a parcheesi board and decks of cards on an art deco side table, as well as some candelabras scattered about, adding extra illumination to the strings of lights overhead.

The Master spun about, momentarily struck by the sight. "This is... ludicrous, even for you.” Picking up a bottle of wine, he began looking for the exit. Or perhaps the entrance. (Who would have ever wanted their room on the other side of this?) There were multiple doorways leading to long hallways like the one he just came through, some brightly illuminated and some dim, some doorways in plain view and some half hidden behind crates and stacks of cheese. But the real trick was scent, of course—she had led him this way because the cheese completely overrode his nose, making it impossible to track her down that way. 

"Not playing fair," he groused, but he couldn’t deny that it presented him with an even more enticing challenge—he’d have to think like her.

He took each door in separately, giving them all his full attention. The thing was, he knew she'd never use an obvious door when an odd, blocked one was readily available, and of those blocked doors, one of them was particularly wonky, off its hinges just a little. Seemed like her kind of door. He clambered back behind the crates, uncorking the wine as he stepped into another hallway, this one sloping upward at least two or three floors before it brought him to a wide door the color of an eggplant, guilded at the edges with little twisting designs. The Master took three long swallows from his pilfered bottle and entered.

The room inside was decked out in a gorgeous Edwardian fashion, with high backed chairs and tables gleamingly polished, heavy embroidered tapestries hanging from the walls, and even a full tea set laid out before a stacked fireplace, although there was no food on the plates or fire in the hearth. Here and there, bits of technology from a number of different races and times spoiled the effect, and yet seemed to fit in all the same.

The Doctor, sprawled out on a chaise longue with a heavy hardback book in her hands, started in surprise. "No way! There are twelve doors in that place, you can't have found me already."

He grinned at her and drank again, the wine buzzing down his throat. "Clever move, with the cheese cave. Still not enough, I'm afraid," he said, slowing his approach, as though she were a rodent who might startle and flitter away.

The Doctor set the book down, just as slowly. "Your nose has gotten quite keen," she told him. "I thought I'd have a few hours of you following other trails before you made it here."

"Would have done, if I'd used my nose." His eyes wandered the sprawl of her body, so presumptuous in its ease. She should know better. But then, he’d have been disappointed if she did.

Her eyes shifted slightly beyond his shoulder, then snapped back, curious and bright. "Then how?"

He shouldn't tell her, but the temptation to gloat was always a weakness. (She knew.) "This place might as well be the inside of your head," he said, fingertips trailing along the edge of a table nearby. "Surely, I should be able to read that by now."

Her teeth sunk a little into her upper lip. "That explains the peacocks, then."

“...What?”

Her sonic screwdriver came out of her pocket, and both the door he came through and the one on the far side of the room flew open, a hoard of peacocks bursting in, alarmed and squawking, their wings beating the air and knocking books and furniture everywhere. With a cry of triumph she dropped behind the chaise, rolled under it, scrambled under the flurry of birds and out the far open door.

The Master shouted after her to no avail, batting at birds and feathers and punting one particularly annoying specimen into a wall. It took him a moment to see beyond the mess, but he made it to that far door and continued his pursuit.

It went on like that for hours. Maybe a day.

More often than not he found her quickly. Occasionally, she gave him the slip for longer, or caught him for a while in a trap she'd laid. But he kept going. She started leaving him little notes (asking if he enjoyed the detour through the lab, or what he planned to do when he caught her). He burned them, then started leaving notes of his own when he got ahead of her (asking how many bones she thought there were on the TARDIS, who she’d been playing billiards with).

Sometimes she got distracted, stumbling upon rooms and sights she had forgotten, or maybe never knew about. When she stopped to investigate, he would get close, so very close, but she always kept moving. He got a proper run-around; lost a shoe, got shot with a strange type of (ultimately harmless) radiation, then got shot in the back with glitter, finished the bottle of wine and one of whiskey that he’d picked up in a stray drawing room. He had found the humor of the situation, and lost it, multiple times. In the end, he wasn’t sure where he had landed.

At last, he cut off her planned escape into a model train room, trapping her between a boiler and an abandoned hallway leading to nowhere. A properly disturbing spot, just a room with an old sofa and a single vase on a table, the wallpaper peeling and browning, and nowhere to go.

"You are relentless, aren't you?" the Doctor asked, a little out of breath. Her eyes searched for an escape path, but she seemed to be coming up short. "It's honestly impressive."

The empty whiskey bottle hung from his fingertips as he stared at her, dead-eyed. “Done?”

"Looks like you've caught me. Sorry about your shoe. Guess I owe you a shopping trip." She was talking fast again, peering at him. "Are you angry with me?"

It wasn’t the first time she had asked him that, though the last time was ages ago. (In the citadel. After graduation.) "Not sure," he said, eyeing the wallpaper. "Maybe you could help me make up my mind."

"Almost let you catch me back in the anti-grav chamber," the Doctor admitted. "But I thought if you realized, you'd go. Didn't want you to go." She eyed the hallway again. 

He closed the gap between them one step at a time, taking in every line and color variation in her face like it was something he might decipher, and stopped centimeters from her. "Why would you let me catch you?"

"See what would happen?" The Doctor pressed up against the wall to get some space between them, an oddly coy move for her. "You totally got me with the bone question, by the way. Brr." She shivered theatrically. (And there it was, the familiar redirection.)

He dropped the bottle on the floor and let it roll away, bracing his hands against the wall on either side of her shoulders, just for the hint of menace. "Before you knew it was me," he said, seemingly apropos of nothing, "I used to think about calling. Having you drop by. Just to see what you'd do."

In his periphery, he could see her fingers twitching, but it didn’t look like nerves. More like she had an instinct she needed to tamp down. "I definitely would have come. You were interesting. And a great conversationalist, at least for texting."

"It was easy," he told her, as though he was letting her in on a secret, "creating someone you'd like. Human but clever. Obsessive but meticulous. Mocked by his peers. And so. very. _taken_ with you." He had almost enjoyed pretending to be O, in his own way. Engaging her ego was always good for a laugh. (And she did love making humans feel special.)

"And you're quite the actor,” she murmured, watching him with that steady, intense gaze of hers. “Always just a little bit nervous to be talking to me, really smart but a touch unsure of yourself. As if you could ever be.” The corner of her mouth quirked, and the Master wasn’t sure if she was teasing or complimenting him.

"You're always so gentle with the nervous ones," he told her, lingering on the word ‘gentle’ like it was a breakable thing. "I had to know what that was like."

"Then you should’ve called."

His eyes burned. “Next time.”

A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the sound of their breath and the tap of her fingers against the wall. But she never could let silence linger (neither could he, but he could usually wait her out) and suddenly two of those fingers were slipping between the buttons of his waistcoat. "I think we fit better now, though. You and this version of me, I mean."

He was too shocked to be kind, and what came out was, “You’re joking. Seventy years in that vault, all your hard work, a planetary genocide, and you’re not angry?”

"Well yeah, I am a bit," she admitted. "I am a lot. And it's frustrating. And it hurts." She was averting her eyes, watching her fingers on his waistcoat instead—she didn't want to say any of it. "I wanted that for us."

He remembered reaching out so many times when he was Missy, and watching her (him) draw away. Too hesitant to trust, and it wasn’t as though the Doctor didn’t have a reason. The Master kept forgetting the way it worked—that the Doctor had to extend the hand first. “And now?”

She reached up and pressed her thumb across his lower lip, then slid her palm round to cup his cheek, the back of his neck. Her eyes bored into his. And then it hit him, like a bullet, what he’d missed. She had wanted something before, when he was in her mind, and he’d got it wrong.

Because she wanted _him._

She dragged their mouths together and his body collapsed against hers as he worked out some unspoken pledge against her lips. This wasn't like the other times they’d kissed, in jest or in thoughtful brilliance or in gratitude. This was ugly and needy and primal in a way they'd said they would never be. Not with each other. (He had told Clara Oswald that they didn’t go in for that sort of thing because Time Lords _didn’t,_ and it was very important that she understood as much, and didn’t go spreading rumors around.) Yet somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to care now. If she was willing to stoop, then why shouldn't he join her? He didn’t have scruples, or a code to keep.

The Doctor tugged him closer, her hand in his belt loop, demanding. One of her legs curled around the back of one of his, trapping him to her as (because she could _never_ be quiet) she made a rough, desperate sound of pleasure. She was all motion and all around him, and that sound undid something in his brain, bringing him to a strange place of hyperfocus. He pushed her coat off her shoulders, then did the same to her braces, shoving her arms away to let them slip down and fall to her legs, then bit her lower lip (how dare she want this so badly, bad enough that he could feel it) to protest her enthusiasm.

Her hands got back to his waistcoat at the same time he was trying to tug her shirt free of her trousers, their arms all in a tangle, and it was good, like they were still fighting, but for better results. He made contact with skin, and she said “Oh,” like she was surprised by it, but she still arched into the touch as his palm skated upward and pressed into her sternum. She wasn’t wearing a bra either, which briefly irritated him, having been confined to them in his last body (for the aesthetic, naturally). But it did make it easier to slide his hand over and just... pinch.

She actually yelped, and then said the word “naughty,” like she was scolding him (like she was in a position to scold anyone). In seeming retaliation, one of her hands wandered down to his backside and lingered.

“Rude,” he murmured against her mouth, hands slipping away, this time to the fastenings of her trousers. He found her eyes as he moved ever so slowly to undo them, but she didn’t stop him, searching his face instead, though he couldn’t imagine what she was looking for. When he found the waistband of her knickers he paused, taking in every detail of her poor, tormented expression (like she couldn’t quite figure out how she got here, but she was still determined to outmaneuver him). He didn’t want to break the moment by over-savouring, so he pushed his hand down until he found her, slick and hot to the touch. His eyes widened before he could stop himself, and he tried to cover by leaning up against her ear. "How long have you been like that?"

"A while," she admitted. "Ticked up a bit right at the end there." He saw one of her hands splayed across the wall, fingers scratching aimlessly, while the other clutched at his shirt collar (which he liked far too much). "Having you so close. Feeling your heartsbeat."

His teeth grazed her earlobe, catching for a moment on her earring, and the taste of metal sang on his tongue. "You could have just said," he told her, knowing that they both knew that wasn’t true. (But maybe, if it happened again. Maybe she'd come right out with it.) One finger slid down farther still between her folds, then stroked upward.

She cried out and arched again, her whole body quivering. "Guess I'm the one playing games now,” she said, haltingly as his lips went to her neck. "I like to think I can still surprise you. Trying to break me or not, at least we can hope you won't be bored."

He bit down on her neck then, hard, and she must have liked it, given how she yelped again, the tenor of it. "Shut up," he said, as his hand went teasing for a moment, unbearably light with his touch.

She laughed a little, sounding overwhelmed. "That's a new technique."

"At least we can hope you won't be bored," he echoed petulantly, but he never stopped (urging her to give over and let him do this for her) drawing those tiny circles into her skin.

She made a strangled sound. "Oh that's, that's really good how... how do you know... oh wow okay yeah wow...." The babbling wasn’t annoying in this context, somehow, but she couldn’t seem to control it at all. "You're... pretty good at this." Her tone conveyed that 'pretty good' was a deliberate undersell.

"I did have the chance to practice," he reminded her. "Seven decades is a long time to sit around."

That admission was clearly a shock, because she snapped her head back against the wall with a dull crack. They winced simultaneously. "You didn't."

"Can't be that surprised, given a few of the items I asked for." Granted, those items were technically for other things. But there’d been no reason to request them for their originally intended purposes. "It helped pass the time. Since you only came in to chat and eat takeaway." He offered a little more pressure then, and a little more speed from his fingertips.

"I also came in to listen to you play,” was her sad comeback, so he had to be doing something right.

"And you got that pensive look," he said, mimicking the old thoughtful frown. "Always kept it filed away for later." It felt dirty admitting as much, but what was the point of pretending that the thought hadn’t existed before now? That they hadn’t always wondered about exactly this?

"Half the time I felt like your tutor," she murmured. "The other half I spent feeling like I couldn't even see the simplest truth, that only you understood anything at all."

He shivered. "Flattery? Now?" He was pretending to be aggravated when the truth couldn't be more the opposite. Her reward was a particularly slow drag of his fingers, the pace eased to let her really feel it.

“Sorry,” she said, clutching at him, not sounding particularly apologetic. And then, “ _Oh._ Oh yes just there…”

He adjusted his angle and tilted his head properly to see her. He could feel the difference in the whole of her body, the way she trembled and tensed seemingly at random, and the way her voice broke. "Like that?" he asked, not because he was unsure but because he wanted her to _tell_ him.

The Doctor smiled. "Yes. That's it. That's good, so good... Master."

His eyelashes fluttered at that, even knowing that she was doing it to provoke him. Her hands fumbled at his clothing, but there was hardly a point, and no way for her to make progress without breaking contact, which he would never allow. “Come on,” he whispered, offering just a little more speed again and following her body as she rose up onto her toes.

"Nngh, right there, yes, like that, Mas—yes _yes._ ” She finally broke eye contact as her whole body arched, fingers scrabbling, one foot coming off the ground as every part of her contracted into whipcords of pleasure. Then she was coming down, grabbing onto him, thumping a fist into his side almost as though she was angry (and he wanted her to do it more, and harder, and he was beginning to think this body had a complex), as all that tension and energy sought a way out. She convulsed, again and again, before finally sagging back against the wall, eyes half closed, panting.

He watched her for a moment, the tip of his tongue pressed to his upper lip, his own (ignored) arousal pressed into her hip. It was daft and gorgeous and infuriating all at once, the way she flailed and spasmed. He anchored her there with his weight while she worked out her body and bearings, trying not to look for the full implications of what they'd just done. (Fuck.) Her face was pressed into his neck then, and she was inhaling the scent of him, but he could also feel her _thinking_ , and knew that if she kept going they would both spiral.

“Don’t make me start over on you,” he said, almost growling.

"Oh no what a terrible threat,” she softly deadpanned. “I'm shaking."

She was, though.

They stood there in silence while her breath slowly returned to normal. Eventually, he withdrew his hand (she didn’t like that part at all, gave a great unhappy sigh about it), raising damp fingers to his lips and sucking them clean. The Doctor stared, mouth agape, looking like she couldn’t decide if that was attractive or disturbing. 

“I’ll remember a handkerchief next time,” he said with a roll of his eyes. 

She was going to say something, but whatever it was, he was certain he didn’t want to know. He pressed a finger (from the other hand) to her lips, briefly, just enough of an imposition to cut her short. Then he took two steps back, tucked his hands into his pockets, turned on his heel, and left her alone to contemplate at leisure.

For whatever good it would do her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We told you something sexy would happen! Of course, more sexy things will eventually happen, but you know, you've gotta give them time because they're used to having A LOT of that. Ugh.
> 
> Thank you so much for the lovely comments you've been leaving us! We haven't really had the brain-ness (or time) to reply individually, but we cherish every glorious word. <3 You are all wonderful.
> 
> Next week we'll have: Mechanical mess! Flower explosions! Awkward first roleplay attempts?


	5. Spilled Wine Watches the Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Four Stages of "Whoops, We Got Sexy With Each Other":
> 
> Denial  
> Avoidance  
> Questionable Roleplay Problem-Solving  
> Alcohol?

It was good to work.

It wasn’t that the Doctor regretted what had happened between her and the Master. Sure she’d had another hallway orgasm and then been left there, leaned up against the wall with her fly open, shivering through the aftershocks and feeling like a fool, again. And sure, she’d revealed a terribly new and vulnerable part of herself to her oldest enemy, a man with a long history of exploiting her emotional needs to torture her, along with any worlds they happened to be on at the time. And _sure_ she had very little idea of what he’d been thinking when he’d just turned and left her there (she’d felt the press of him against her hip, but a physical response could mean any number of things) without seeking anything for himself or even making a wry comment. He’d just… walked away.

So it was good to work. As long as the Doctor was up to her elbows in the guts of some machine, she didn’t have time to think about the Master and his perfect, long fingers. The heat of his mouth. The brush of his (this time rather sexy, and he could _never_ know she thought that) beard. Instead she was focusing on good old, reliable repair work, shoving the sonic screwdriver between her teeth to free up both hands. 

It had felt right, pulling the Master to her that way. Demanding his kiss, the press of his body against hers. (He’d earned it, after all, by catching her.) She’d wanted it. (Only running to make him chase her, and what was the point of being chased if not to be caught?) It was okay to want it, the Doctor thought. Or would have, if she had been thinking at all. Which she was not.

What she _was_ doing was fixing up an old flower engine that she’d picked up on Nacto VII (however many) ages ago. It had needed a lot of work, which made it a perfect Not Thinking diversion. And as long as she was working on it, the Doctor definitely wasn’t wondering where the Master was (or what he was up to, or what it would feel like to pull his shirt off and run her hands all over his chest and arms). She was just swapping out fuses and tweaking nano-synths, and scrubbing rust out of the conversion compartments. It was enough work to keep her mind occupied for an entire afternoon, and off of all the things she was _not_ _thinking_ about.

Because the Doctor couldn’t help but wonder if she was like this (Snacky? No, ‘Thirsty’ was the word she wanted, although there was a term about snacking too, wasn’t there?) because she was a woman. Some of her bodies had been sexual before, some had even been (the wounds have healed, but she’ll never forget the way her hearts had beat for Rose) romantic. This new need though, this primal want, this aching and scrabbling desperation—it made her feel a bit guilty. A bit wrong. Well, not _wrong_. But off balance, certainly. Out of control even.

Adding the pollen was the next step, and the Doctor spent about an hour picking out the best rare specimens, only to load them all in and find that the whole coordination circuit was shot. So she had to figure out where she had stashed her replacements. But after a bit of searching she was able to retrieve a nice, shiney new coordination circuit from storage room Rho, and bring it back to install.

It was not because she was a woman now. (And what a ridiculous thought—the Doctor had clearly been spending a little too much time around late 20th, early 21st century Earth.) Gender had nothing to do with it, not for her anymore than it did for humans. Besides, it had all started back when she had been wearing pinstripes and was still in mourning (for Rose, for Gallifrey). Finding the Master had been a link back to the childhood she’d lost, the planet that guilt and shame and suffering had made her miss so terribly. Losing him had been like losing them all for a second time. And she had ended up losing him twice, as well.

And then there had been Missy, who had played with the Doctor again, like the old days, and talked with the Doctor, and even been a companion (of sorts) for a while. They’d been so close, and although the Doctor had been too afraid to acknowledge the feeling, she still remembered wondering what that wicked red mouth would taste like. The kiss she’d given Missy had been about something else, had been tender and full of feeling, but also a bit chaste. The Doctor hadn't truly “gone all in,” so to speak.

And _then_ there was _this bastard_. Beautiful, clever, and as wild as any version of the Master the Doctor had ever known. He’d destroyed Gallifrey, brought about the third and final death of a planet to which the Doctor had never really belonged after all—but he was still her old friend, still her connection to everything she had loved back then. And _oh_ , she wanted to _slap_ him. To claw his eyes out. To hold him down and kiss him so deeply he found a way to love himself again, just a tiny little bit.

The Doctor dragged the sonic screwdriver out from between her teeth, grease streaking her face as she looked down at her handywork. “Well, Doctor, that looks about right, doesn’t it?” Her hand came down to caress the switch, ornately carved and sparkling with promise. “Fancy giving it a go, Doctor? Thank you, Doctor, don’t mind if I do.”

She threw the lever, and a moment later blossoms started emerging from the floor, blooming on the walls and ceiling, draping themselves, vine-like, across the tables and stools. Beautiful flowers in every color and every size opened around her, and the Doctor gave a crow of triumph, rocketing to her feet. The scent of them was incredible, perfumes from all different climates, all different _worlds_ filling the Doctor’s nose, filling the room.

Filling the room awfully quickly, actually, as the blossoms came faster and thicker, and the Doctor started to do some calculations in her head. “Seems like I’ve got it working a little too well.”

Just then, a sardonic voice crackled from the speakers above her head. “Overdone it, have you?”

She glanced up, turning to face the camera in the far corner of the ceiling. The Master speaking to her through the intercom right now meant two things—one, he was in the console room right now, and two, the TARDIS was indulging him. The Doctor supposed that the ship was probably just trying to keep the Master distracted, but that didn’t stop it from being a bit unnerving.

“Hello there,” she said, squinting into the lense. “Are you watching me?”

“Yes.”

"Naughty.” (She wasn’t seriously using that word again, was she?) “I'm fine. This is fine." (And she could just imagine herself as that meme, sitting serenely and sipping coffee as the whole room was swallowed up in flowers.) She brushed a bunch of wild red blooms out of the way and leaned back towards the flower engine. "Isn't it amazing? A machine that makes flowers bloom right out of the carbon dioxide and water in the air. Imagine what it could do to a barren garden. Or a whole field!"

"Why would I imagine that?" That was fair—she doubted that gardens or fields of flowers were his thing _,_ as it were. "Wouldn't think you'd be impressed with shortcuts."

"It's not a shortcut, it's engineering beauty,” the Doctor retorted. It really was getting rather crowded in there, though. She fumbled toward the switch right as a giant purple flower with twelve overlapping petals jutted up between her fingers. "Bit too much beauty, maybe."

"Were you planning to drown in beauty?" The speakers weren’t so fine-tuned that she could truly make out his tone, which was bothersome. "Because you're getting there."

The Doctor laughed. “I'm alright, really. Although it would be a pretty funny way to die." It wasn’t drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra, but Carrie would approve. (They’d had such a wonderful trip together.)

“Don’t let me stop you.”

The Doctor was basically swimming in flowers now, but she managed to bring the sonic to bear and throw the switch remotely, and the hum of the engine sputtered out and died. Perfect. Her nose crinkled in delight as she cupped her hands around a pile of blooms and threw them into the air. “I love technology.”

“And speaking in clichés, apparently.”

She wanted to protest (anyway, _he_ could talk), but then, he wasn’t wrong. "Sometimes. When I'm feeling very dramatic, or very full." A blink. "Of emotion, I mean."

His reply was an audible snort through the speakers, while the Doctor waded through the flowers, trying not to step on too many as she made her way to the door. "Woops. Oh dear. Sorry. Sorry! Oops."

She thumbed the lock and watched a cascade of color tumble to the hallway floor. She left the mess where it was, heading back towards the console room, but even as she started down the hall, his voice popped up again, piped through different speakers:

“Someone’s been getting all stalkery.”

“What’s that?” the Doctor asked, shaking flowers from her coat as she walked.

“Found your light reading.”

Then she remembered. When he’d first arrived, (when she’d first kidnapped him) she’d pulled up all her files on the Master, every bit of information she had about his life, though the more recent information was quite a bit more precise and detailed than the older stuff. Of course, the TARDIS wouldn’t think to keep that away from him—it was _about_ him, which meant the Doctor was quite thoroughly busted.

She stepped into the console room, her clothes streaked with pollen and a flower sticking out of the top of her boot, to find him propped against the databank, cringing at a picture of Harold Saxon (standing next to his wife, serene and confident in front of the cameras). "It's so hard to look good in politics,” he mused aloud. “All suits and clean shaven chin and smiles. I don't know why anyone does it."

"It is a bit slimy, isn't it?" the Doctor said, pausing at the top of the stairs. She’s not sure why he was willing to admit it. "But that's you, playing the game. Taking the faces you need for your clever schemes."

"It did nearly work," he agreed, swiping through the newspaper clippings absently. "But it got boring there for a while, terrorizing the same people day after day. You have to keep coming up with horrors that are _new_ and _worse_ just to keep everyone occupied. It's exhausting. Reckon that's why I got sloppy there at the end."

“You got complacent," the Doctor corrected. “Also, you got bored of _me,_ which was rude.”

He turned to look up at her, leaning back against the console and folding his arms across his chest. "Sadness doesn't interest me. You're just as boring as anyone when you're sad. Need you angry. Or indignant. Or at least mortified."

The Doctor had started down the steps towards him, but the comment arrested her in place. He didn’t want her to be sad? All he did was chase her around—killing people she met, torturing her friends, throwing her off radio dishes, _destroying_ _her home planet_. He’d taunted her for _months_ about ‘how her hearts had broken’ (yes, she’d cried, because it had been worth crying over, even if she’d been rather prone to tears in those days) once she’d finally worked out who the Toclafane really were. He’d obsessed over _breaking her_ , circling round and round with his cryptic revelations and his stories as she stood frozen in the stasis field. She had spent much of that time reeling under all the new information, fighting the fog of his invasion into her mind, but she still could vividly recall his eyes searching her face, looking for that evidence, desperate to find it. ( _I know you’re broken. But it’s all over now._ ) And now he was claiming that sort of thing didn’t interest him?

“Really?” She changed course abruptly, looping around to check some controls on the other side of the console, putting it between them so she wouldn’t be tempted (or forced, and wasn’t that a delicate dance?) to maintain eye contact. “That's interesting.”

"Thought you knew." He went back to swiping, passing by images, reports, data. Eventually, he paused on a different record. "Also noticed you have a file on O, with all our correspondence over the years."

He had brought up O before (right before, and somehow it had felt like a deflection, then) and the Doctor wasn’t sure what it meant. “Well, yeah. I enjoyed our talks. Which you know, since you were doing it on purpose.”

He peeked around the time rotor at her, although she avoided meeting his gaze. “Would you have tried? With him, I mean. If you'd found the time. Always wondered."

“Tried what?” Despite herself, she looked up. Just in time for him to wiggle his eyebrows at her.

“Oh!” She felt her face heat. “Right! That.” Very smooth, Doctor. "I dunno. I suppose I might've done. If it came up." Ordinarily, she’d have been more flummoxed by the question, but maybe it made sense to think of these things now? She couldn’t say for certain what she would have done if he’d made a move on her, but she hadn't thought much about doing those sorts of things (well, except for some experimenting on her own—how could she not be curious?) with other people, until recently. (Well, there had been that moment with Yaz….) “I really don't know. It's not like it's always the first thing on my mind. Maybe we just would’ve stayed up all night drinking wine and naming the stars instead. Or... you know. Something like that.”

They had met for the first time when she was still in tweed and bowties, after Amy and Rory, but before Clara. They’d sent messages back and forth on occasion (questions about maths equations, and alien technology, and scone recipes), but her next body had been rather preoccupied (with teaching, with Missy, with Gallifrey), and it had gone silent between them for a while. On regenerating, she had struck up the communication again, this time in earnest—she’d really wanted someone to talk to when the fam was sleeping or off catching up with their other families. (She didn’t much like being alone, and he had always distinguished himself by replying in minutes.)

"It was nice," she observed after a moment, a little lost in the thought. "Having someone to talk to. Someone who seemed to understand. How I think. The ways I feel."

“Too bad you couldn’t keep him,” the Master answered, and his tone was deceptively light.

The Doctor took refuge in some unimportant readouts for a moment, while she figured out what to say next. She was suspicious of his aims here, but found herself speaking honestly all the same. “To be fair, I don't get to keep any of them.”

“I did warn you. Ages back.”

"And a few times since," the Doctor agreed. She wasn’t giving him an inch on this one. "I know you don't like it. You think they aren’t worth it."

"I think you're deluding yourself, yes," he chuckled, and there was a cruelty in it that left her unprepared for the abrupt admission that followed. "But I can see the appeal on their end. It was thrilling, getting that invitation. Getting to pretend I'd never seen this place before, giving you the reaction you crave. The script is so perfectly distilled these days."

She peered around the console again, and caught him looking over the steganographic image he had sent her, the fishy clue to his location (she’d been the one chasing him, then) and it drew the Doctor in again, despite her apprehension. That and… well, he was right. O had been everything that inspired her, that drew her to humans, the very type of person who ended up becoming a companion. And she remembered something else, too.

"You said it was ridiculous. That was clever."

"Give me a little credit, I was hardly gonna go with the usual 'how could we fit' and 'it's bigger on the inside??'" He stepped back and gestured about, miming the shock (always so dramatic) wth his jaw practically unhinged and a hand clapped to his chest.

"No,” the Doctor countered, (fighting a laugh) shaking her finger at him. “You said it's ridiculous because you actually thought it was ridiculous. _That's_ why it was clever."

“This decor scheme is preposterous, even by my standards.”

“I think it’s perfect, and so does she,” the Doctor told him, in a tone that brooked no argument. For a moment they both stood there, taking in the space and the low light of the room, but a new thought crept into the Doctor’s mind after a time, and she couldn’t stop herself from voicing it. “Before…” she said slowly, “you claimed that you wanted to know what it was like to have their experience, but you never actually said—how was it?”

He didn’t answer for so long she began to think that perhaps he hadn’t heard, or that he’d gotten distracted by something else, or maybe that he was aggravated by the inquiry. But at last her answer came, and the timber of his voice electrified the dip between her shoulder blades.

“Like being cradled by the sun.”

It had to be on purpose, that tone, and the Doctor was bothered to find herself such an easy mark. (Then again, other versions of her had bought far worse lines. Maybe they were actually getting better as they aged?) She stepped around toward the other side of the console only to find him standing there, blocking her path.

“We could give it a go,” he said.

She frowned. “Give what a go?”

"Bottle of wine, naming the stars." There was a mischievous curl to his posture that she couldn’t miss. "I slip back into character easy enough."

The Doctor's eyebrows went up. She was so startled by the idea, she’d forgotten to keep her face in order. "You… you mean like roleplay?" (Like Amy with her costumes, making Rory stammer and panic, or Rory pretending to be a Raggedy Man from the stars, or River that one time they had—)

“You could call it that.” _He_ clearly wouldn’t, but she didn’t know another term for what he was suggesting.

The Doctor knew she should be cautious. ( _Traps are my flirting,_ Missy had said once, and it had taken far too long for the Doctor to understand how true that actually was.) She wasn't certain what the Master’s motivations were here... but it didn’t seem like he’d been lying about his interest in the companion experience. Maybe… maybe he actually did he wish he could have more of it.

The Doctor had to admit to herself that she liked that idea. Very much. And she had liked O very much, too.

"Alright," she told him after a breath. “I’ll bring the wine.”

The Master stepped back immediately, all at once impossible to read. "Meet back here in... an hour?"

It had sounded like a question, but he was off before she could reply. So an hour it was, then. The Doctor wasn't sure what she was supposed to do (aside from fetching the wine) to get ready. Change? (Would she have before?) And what about the wine? She would have picked something old and expensive for the Master, but for O she ended up going for an easy, drinkable red and a box of biscuits (she did, however, make sure she found ones that the Master liked, checking the pantry to find out what he’d been snacking on). She also changed back into her blue rainbow shirt, and then, on a whim, changed her bootlaces out for shimmery silver ones. Then she sat on the steps to the console and panicked anxiously at a spot in the wall until the hour had passed.

He emerged exactly fifty seven minutes later, dressed in his old clothes (that’s right, he'd left them on the TARDIS when they’d all changed for Barton's party), with his beard trimmed down to that thoughtless five o'clock shadow and his hair parted to the other side because _apparently_ he had opinions about which side looked more evil (okay, she agreed, parting to the other side made him look more boyish, for some unfathomable reason). His head was ducked shyly, hands sunk in his pockets, and he stared around the room like he was still cowed by its existence. He also approached with hesitation, as though worried about disturbing her.

For some reason, the lack of beard was the thing that had the Doctor's head klaxons blaring 'abort abort abort' but what she said instead was, "Hey there! Doing alright?"

"I got lost," he admitted, pointing behind him, "for a bit, but I got back eventually. Think I accidentally stumbled on someone's bedroom."

"Oh! Was it good lost or bad lost? Because if it was bad I'm sorry I didn't find you, but if it was good I'm glad you had fun." (Was she talking too fast? It felt like she was talking too fast.)

But he smiled, and for the first time in ages that appeared to be all it was. A genuine, somewhat childlike smile. "Good lost," he said. "There's a room full of bubbles?"

"Oh yeah, I love that room!" she told him, and she kept right on talking, despite the fact that she felt a little dizzy looking at his face. "I built it ages ago after I realized I liked bubble baths but didn't like being wet and naked for so long. If you pop them they smell like lavender and gin."

"I noticed," he said. "Didn't know you liked gin so much. No record of it that I'd found." He scratched the back of his neck, stopping in front of her, his toes pointed ever so slightly inward. (He always had such attention to detail. The Doctor was clever, but she tended to miss the details. Perhaps that was how he kept fooling her, time after time after time.)

"Not so much now," she told him. She should have stood up when he came in. Now it was too late, and she had to wonder if she would have been this awkward around him if this had happened for real, before he’d revealed himself. (Quite possibly. But also maybe not.) She looked up at him. "When I was younger. Fancied myself a bit of a bohemian."

“I'm terrible with the stuff." His shin was nearly close enough to brush her knee, but he didn’t seem to notice. "One martini and it's goodnight."

Her lips twisted. He was so _cute_. And sweet. (And how much of this was a deliberate front, or did he just get lost in it? A cover like that required a certain level of true commitment, but she’d never really understood his knack for disappearing inside another identity. She certainly couldn’t pretend to be different than she was for any length of time.) She held up her bottle. "What about wine?"

His brief double take made it seem that he hadn't noticed the bottle until she drew his attention to it. "I can manage wine," he said. "Less sleeping, more long-winded explanations about my research when I’ve had wine. So if that's what you're after, I'm your man." He looked away immediately after saying it, though, as though the expression was much too forward and now he had to return her privacy by averting his gaze.

“Sounds fun." She wanted to get up, but he was too close. "Should we have Earth wine on an alien planet then?"

The Master’s—O’s—eyes went wide. "I'd... yes, of course." He looked down, saw that he was blocking her (or did she give it away with her face? her tone?) and backed awkwardly out of her way.

“Excellent!” The Doctor hopped up as though she hadn't noticed any of it. “I know just the place. Very remote, nice and quiet. Really good for stargazing." She shoved the bottle at him (he gripped it with both hands, like a lifeline), and one dash around the console later they were in flight. "Dorisis Minor," she said as she flipped a switch, the TARDIS lurching in response. "In the Braxsit galaxy. Imagine the most remote part of Norway and that's what Dorisis Minor is to its home galaxy. Incredible star-watching spot. People will tell you it's Dorisis Major that's the best, but that's just because they're factoring in things like atmosphere and access to a loo."

O’s gaze shifted nervously to the doors. “There’s no atmosphere?”

"Don't worry, we've got everything we need right here with the TARDIS. You couldn't be safer. We’ll want chairs, though." She dashed behind the stairs, rummaging through a cupboard and returning in a moment with two folding chairs under her arm. "Get the doors!" she ordered him, cheerfully. He rushed over, and the Doctor noticed him take a deep breath before he swung the door open.

Outside there was nothing but rock and cliffs and a night sky so clear it seemed almost unreal, even to the Doctor, as she stepped out onto the planet. The TARDIS had picked them a perfect elevated mesa-like hill to settle on, the rock smooth and ever so slightly giving under their feet, the way patch asphalt could be. She set the chairs up just outside of the ring of orange light cast from the open TARDIS doors, then turned to look at O. "What do you think about that?"

He set one foot outside the doors and stared. Then he looked to her, eyes glittering. "How... how are you doing that?"

"The TARDIS is giving us air," she explained. It was a novel concept for a human, but she wondered if the Master got anything out of the explanation. (Or out of watching her explain things?) "All I had to do was extend the shields out a little, and let the atmosphere from the console room fill the space. Don't worry, it's perfectly safe."

He took another step, then another. "The result being a view that no one can see but us." He reached one of the folding chairs and took his seat without notice, transfixed by the stars.

"That's right." She produced two stemless wine glasses and a corkscrew from her pocket, plucking the bottle from his fingers and setting about serving them both. (She wanted to give him a minute to enjoy it, just on his own, before she interjected with her alien knowledge, perspective, and opinions.)

He turned in the chair, trying to get multiple angles on the sky. "How far are we? From Earth, I mean."

Interestingly, there was a chance that the Master might not actually know the answer to that. The universe was a very big place, afterall, and it was doubtful that he'd have ever had any interest in this small, isolated galaxy. "About fifty two billion light years," the Doctor answered. "This galaxy is outside the observable distance from your planet. We're also about three thousand years in the past, relatively speaking.”

"Is it better, being here that far back?"

"I wasn't really shooting for a deliberate year," the Doctor said. "Other than avoiding the other times I came here or the two century long metorshower they had during what would be 2100 to 2304 on Earth. But yeah, mostly just random." He looked beautiful in the light of the universe. The Doctor passed him one of the crystal wine glasses, and also a soft green scarf she produced from her pocket, offering it up with the explanation, "Bit nippy out here." Not for a Time Lord, of course. But he was human. That was the game.

O looped the scarf carelessly about his neck, then took the wine and raised his glass to cheers. "I've wondered what this could be like for ages. Traveling with you, I mean."

Was that the Master talking, or O, or both? The Doctor raised her glass to meet his, the clink of crystal quickly swallowed by the endless space surrounding them. "I always figured we'd make it, sooner or later.”

They sat quietly for a time, an energy hovering between them as they both watched the sky and pretended that they weren’t also watching each other. Eventually, needing to break the silence and also to live up to her promise about naming the stars, the Doctor reached up, pointing to one bright spot in the heavens.

"That star's named after me."

He followed her finger, leaning in. "That one, the blue?"

"Yep. The twinkly one. I helped birth it."

"You..." He turned his head to look at her, and he was very close, close enough that she could feel his breath on her face. He was apparently too awed to notice, though. "How'd you manage that?"

"That solar system, Fornayis, and the two next to it, were settled by colonists from a neighboring galaxy. They brought a great deal of terraforming technology with them, including a fission engine to convert space matter into a star. I came to watch, really. But the process started to collapse halfway through, so I came in and... midwifed a bit." She blinked. "Although I was a man then. So I... midhusbanded? That doesn't sound right."

“And they named the star 'Doctor'?" he said with a laugh.

"Yeah, the Doctor star." She liked his laugh. It hit her gut much like she remembered gin doing. (She could never have told the Master this story.) "It sounds better in their language, though.” She indicated a larger, slightly paler star to his left. "That one is called 'The Water That Falls' because it has a bit of atmosphere, which gives its light a rippling effect."

"Sounds like poetry," he said, then took his first sip of wine. Well. It was a bit more of a gulp. He was practically vibrating as he pointed to the right. "And that one?"

The Doctor searched her mind for the best translation. "The Fire Beast. From the mythology of its first populated planet. The people believed that it was a giant dragon-like creature."

"Benevolent or evil?"

"Evil,” she told him, delighting in the ghost-story feel of it. “They feared summer because they believed it was the creature coming to harm them. The change of seasons to fall is the most celebrated event on the calendar, even in the modern age."

"How do you know that?" he asked, and he sounded a little breathless. A good ghost story, then. "Do you memorize all these facts and figures and histories, or do you know because you go everywhere?"

"Bit of both," the Doctor said, and she was really warming to the game now—his interest and admiration headier than the wine they were drinking. "I don't think anyone can go everywhere, though I keep trying. That one I know because I once travelled with someone from that planet. Sahidon their name was. Gorgeous singing voice. Two throats! They could harmonize with themself."

He looked perplexed at that. "I've only ever heard of you traveling with humans."

"Humans are my favorite," the Doctor told him, and now it was her turn to lean in. "But I've branched out a few times. You never know where you're going to meet a new friend."

"How do you find them?" he asked. "Most of the humans I've known are... well, not like your friends. Not quite so open-minded or kind. Or brilliant."

“Well, you know,” the Doctor answered, and she suddenly wanted to to brush it off because it’s not like the Master (he had _selected_ Clara for her, and she still couldn’t quite wrap her head around that) didn’t understand this part, “not everyone wants to live life on the edge, and there _is_ a certain kind of beauty in ordinary life. The slow path, I sometimes call it. And then some people are so special, so extraordinary, that they stand out even when inundated with the mundane."

"So you look for those people," he said, but she shook her head a little.

"I look for the people who just need that one push, that single opportunity to discover how extraordinary they really are. That's where I live—in those moments, those catastrophes, those adventures. _So many_ people are magical, if only they had something to show them what they're capable of.”

The Master would’ve laughed at her, or at least made a disgusted face and maybe a vomiting noise, if she’d made such an emotional declaration in front of him. But O just ducked his head again, peering into his glass as he murmured, "You make it sound so romantic."

"Do I?" The Doctor had to consider that. "I suppose it is. It _can_ feel a bit like destiny." Then she grimaced. "That sounded grandiose, I didn't mean it to sound grandiose. I guess I just... feel like a catalyst sometimes. For events. For people. For change."

Something flickered in his eyes and for a second the Doctor thought, _this is it_. There had been other moments (honestly, she’d been testing him a bit) that she’d expected him to get annoyed or frustrated with her, to break character and revert to his true self. She wasn’t sure what it was about this moment that caught more than the others, but just for a second she saw something move under O’s sweet, cautious expression.

And then it was gone, and it was just O again, tipping his head back to look at the stars. "Maybe you are."

The Doctor pointed again, this time to a bright, flickering thing straight above their heads. "That one doesn't have a name. Well. I'm sure someone somewhere has named it, but I've never heard it." She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "What do you think we should call it?"

O rubbed a hand absently over his knee, humming to himself in thought. "Um. I was going to suggest a famous scientist, or someone important, but when I looked at it, I just thought... 'Gilbert'. No idea why."

The Doctor squinted up at the star. "It looks like a Gilbert. Does it? Yeah, I think it does. Nice.” The Doctor watched him swallow another gulp of wine, then shifted close, conspiratorially. “Do you want to know one of my favorite names?" she asked. He nodded and she informed him, with all due gravity, that it was "Alonso."

O pressed his lips together, clearly trying not to laugh. "Why that one?"

"I don't know. No, wait! I think it's because one time I got to say, 'Allons-y Alonso’ and it was brilliant."

"I can see why that might endear the name to you, just a bit," O admitted. His eyes were bright, smiling at her as he pointed up. "Do any of the stars look like Alonsos tonight?"

She looked, then indicated a red star just a bit beyond Gilbert. “How about that one. They seem like they go together rather well."

"Good," he agreed. "Gilbert and Alonso. Alonso and Gilbert? Sounds good either way, I think."

They sound like they should be on telly," said the Doctor, amused. She smiled, tipping her head back, and her hand came up to brush his shoulder which was _weird_ because she didn't mean to do it. At least she didn't think she did. It just sort of happened. “Roommates that don’t get on in some sort of sitcom. And then, of course, they get involved in a heist or get framed for a crime they didn't commit, and have to go on the run together. They never did get along but now they _have to_ work together to clear their names, and on the way they learn to become fast friends."

She realized that O was staring at her hand on his shoulder. He cleared his throat. "Right. Of course. It's really an adventure yarn the whole time."

Curious, she ghosted her fingers down his sleeve, watching him follow with his eyes. "I like it when the genre surprises you."

"If that's your preference, you could add a second twist," he suggested, quietly, as though the idea were somehow scandalous. "Have it turn into a mystery, or a romance."

"Oh, aren't you a daring one?

His mouth twisted up at the corner, bashful as ever. "Wouldn't want you to get bored."

It caught her off-guard, the exact same words they’d said to each other to tease and scratch, but in such a different context. O was still so hesitant, and it gave the Doctor a lot of feelings she didn't understand. She did want to smoosh his face between her hands, though. (And if the Master ever knew she’d felt cute agression toward him, even in one of his disguises, he’d probably murder her.) "Of Gilbert and Alonso? Never."

"Certainly not once they've found the stolen crown jewels and made their feelings for each other known through a heartfelt and tearful confession." For a fanciful idea made in jest, his tone was all warmth, not a tease this time, or a rebuke for her own softness. The Doctor found herself leaning in again.

"That does sound like an adventure. And it must've been a very moving conversation."

He didn't withdraw from the new proximity, though his eyes dropped away. "Must’ve. I'm not very savvy on romantic overtures, though, so I'm not sure how that would go."

"They probably aren't either," the Doctor murmured. "All stops and starts, and saying the wrong words."

That dragged his gaze back. "Do you think?"

"Definitely. But that's what makes them endearing. The audience loves them."

"Doctor..."

Her lips parted. "O?"

He tilted his head, closing the distance between them. But something stopped him from closing that gap, and he drew back into his chair, draining the rest of the wine from his glass. "Sorry," he said. "I shouldn't..."

“Oh, no, I’m the one who shouldn’t...” she said, leaning away sharply as well. He’d been about to… but why had he stopped? She groped for something to say. “You’re human.”

That seemed to throw him. “Is there a biological issue?”

“What? Oh no, I just.. I mean you’ve had a glass of wine.”

For some reason, that made him smile again, his awkwardness easing away. “Are you… worried about taking advantage of me?”

It did sound silly when he put it like that (and doubly so given that this was really the Master, who was not human at all and could probably drink her under the table) but the Doctor had made her bed and now she had to… no, she wasn’t going to finish that expression. “Maybe a bit. Sorry.”

“I have had _half_ a glass. I’m usually a bit of a lightweight, but it’d take more than that to compromise me. Promise.”

“Prove it,” the Doctor challenged, before she could think better of it.

"Are you a copper now? Going to put me through balance and dexterity tests?"

It was kind of funny, actually, and the Doctor decided to lean into it. “Yep. Touch your finger to my nose.”

He raised his finger. Looked at it. Considered her. Then he reached out and placed it just on the tip of her nose. “Not bad,” the Doctor said, but she was brought up short when he let his finger drop again, and it passed over her lips on the way down. There was no way that happened accidentally, and when she looked for it, she could see a bit of mischief springing into his eyes. A bit of promise.

“Oh…”

“That’s my name.”

Stupid, clever boy. “It’s good name.”

She wasn’t sure who moved first, but suddenly they were bridging that gap for a third time, their mouths coming together, and it was (nothing like kissing the Master) soft and warm and impossibly tender. O kissed her like he thought she might break if he pushed too hard or took too much, and although the Doctor was _hardly_ fragile, there was something stirring about being handled with such care. It made her feel (the way companions did, the way the Master didn’t) special, valuable somehow. And when she pressed for more he yielded readily, his mouth opening under her questing tongue, offering himself up to her without reservation.

It felt _so good_ the Doctor was dizzy again, and he _tasted_ good, too. (But also different? The scent and flavor of the Master that she knew so well was softer, almost as if muted somehow. Had he changed the way he tasted as part of his disguise? That was impossible right?) O had wine on his lips, and some spice she couldn’t identify, and when she finally pulled away again he did this adorable thing where his eyes stayed closed for a moment, with his lips pursed and chin jutting forward like he was still searching for her mouth.

She waited until he opened his eyes and found her face again—he looked a bit dazed— then gave him a smile. “That was unexpected. Nice though. Really nice. Really super nice.” Her babbling sounded awkward in her own ears, but it seemed to reassure him somehow, and his pursed expression eased into a small, shy smile of his own.

“It was.”

“Do you… want to do it again?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

This time she pushed a little more, and he was so ready to take what she gave him that before the Doctor knew it, she was half straddling his thighs (quite a feat in those chairs), cupping his face in both hands and lapping him up like a much finer wine than the one they’d both been drinking. He made soft, unconscious noises into her mouth, hands flapping uselessly at her coat, and the Doctor could tell that if she wanted anything more to happen, she needed to take charge. And that was perfect because the Doctor loved being in charge.

Except.

Except there was something off here, something niggling in the back of her mind that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She slowed the pace of their kiss, seeking time, seeking understanding. (He didn’t seem to notice, just kept making those little sounds.)

It was that lack. The lack of his taste, the lack of _the Master_ that was jarring her. He was still there, underneath the illusion of O, of course he had to be, but the Doctor couldn’t find him. And yes. he was a chameleon and yes, putting on the persona was the whole point, but the Doctor hadn’t expected not to be able to find him in the cracks of this game they were playing. It was almost like the Master had shut himself away, far away, leaving O here to keep her occupied. And as much as she liked O… well, he wasn’t actually real.

The Doctor had been worried that the Master was planning to trick her, that he was making fun of her somehow by suggesting the game, but this… this was worse. He wasn’t allowed to just _go away_ , to withdraw so completely from her that the Doctor was suddenly afraid that if she put her hands on his chest, she’d only find a single heartbeat. This was wrong.

“This is wrong.” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“I’m sorry?” There was no flash of the Master in his eyes, no irritation or worry at her deviation from the script. Just mild confusion from O, looking bemused and (thoroughly kissed) not yet worried.

“Sorry, I meant it’s getting late,” she said, scrambling. “We should go in.”

He blinked at her, and now there was a little bit of concern in his eyes. Not too much, but she could see that O was starting to suspect that something was amiss. He took up the wine bottle and followed her, as she hauled the chairs back into the TARDIS and shut the door. Bustling about putting things away gave her a few moments to avoid looking at him, but she couldn’t avoid it indefinitely.

When she turned around to address him, though, he was a lot closer than she realized. Practically on top of her.

“I’ve done something wrong.”

Despite everything, despite her upset and confusion, despite the fact that she could demand that the Master just drop the act now, the Doctor didn’t want to leave him like this. Didn’t want to leave O (her friend who wasn’t real) like this. She took his hand.

“You didn’t,” she told him, peering into his eyes. They were lovely eyes, soft and curious (and wrong, they were wrong, wrong, _wrong_ ) and concerned for her, even now. “Honest. I just think that’s… enough. For tonight. But I had a lovely time.” She squeezed his fingers tightly for a moment., then released them, already turning away to get herself out of the console room as quickly as possible. “You should get some sleep!” she called over her shoulder. “We’ve got another adventure waiting for us tomorrow!”

It was only once she was in the hallway that she realized she’d left her own glass lying on the rocks by their little campsite, a bit of red wine spilling out of it. A few centuries in that planet’s future, and a few hundred years in her own past, the Doctor would find that glass and the little red stain upon the rocks and get cross at whoever was littering in such a lovely, undisturbed place as this, not knowing that she herself (he himself) was to blame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this one was a little late! It was a little longer, though, so hopefully that made it worth it. :)
> 
> We're so happy y'all are enjoying this, you have no idea. And we're sorry about the downer ending on this one, they were very insistent on that point.
> 
> Next chapter: Beach trip! Tidepools! Inappropriate conversations about previous regenerations!


	6. Bonfire Confessional

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A trip to observe marine life, a dare that isn't a dare, and a frank conversation about how and when certain Time Lords (who shall remain nameless) got lucky.
> 
> Past regenerations do not approve this message.

The Master had a bet running with himself to see how long the Doctor could actually manage to keep her TARDIS in the Vortex before she just _had_ to land somewhere and stretch her legs. That do-gooder impulse could only drift across a sea of stars for so long before it needed to make port and unload. Hiding herself in machinery and repairs was clever, but it couldn’t keep her occupied forever.

Of course, when she did decide to land, he was a little surprised that her reasoning was “tidepools full of crabs!”

They were on the beach.

The sand was a dull, rust-colored red and it stretched on for miles, the coastline stumbling back and forth until it disappeared behind a set of perilous-looking cliffs. It was hot, proper hot, Gallifreyan summer levels of hot, and even though neither of them could burn, he could feel the suns (all three of them) giving it the old college heave-ho.

The Doctor had started the whole ordeal by gathering up driftwood along the beach and tossing it into a pile, claiming that they could start a bonfire in a few hours. Now she was standing in a tidepool, trousers rolled up above the knee, feet bare, carefully prodding at a snail with a stick. “Look at her, she’s gorgeous!”

She crouched down to get a better look (waterlogging the bottom of her coat) but the Master wasn’t paying any attention—either to the incessantly inane babble about hermaphroditism in mollusks and how interesting it would be to ‘have your hard bits on the outside,” or to her blatant disregard (she took her shoes off, but left her coat on) of her own vestments. Instead, he was laid up against a rock close by, eyes closed under a pair of sunglasses (not the sonic ones, he’d checked) which he had found inside a breadbox in the kitchens. He definitely didn’t flinch when the Doctor suddenly shouted “Crab!” and sped past him across the damp sand in pursuit of a very large crustacean, which looked like it was absolutely going to out-scuttle her.

He had four and a half blissful moments of quiet before the Doctor appeared near him again, holding a net with a long handle and looking thoughtful. Although that squint might have just been the suns in her eyes.

“Can I ask you a question that you probably don't want to answer and will also possibly get angry at me for asking?"

The Master kept his posture relaxed—the glasses were dark enough that she probably couldn’t see that he'd opened his eyes. “Would it matter if I said no?” he asked, in his laziest tenor.

"Well, yeah, it would,” she said, then frowned. “But I'd probably end up asking anyway, at some point. So in that sense? I guess not really."

Rewarding her for honesty wasn’t really his style, but then, he’d already passed up his chance to stay inside. “Go on.”

"How do you do it—regenerate into an exact image of another person? I mean, I’ve done it by accident before, didn’t even realize it’d happened. But I definitely couldn't do it on purpose."

The Master had to assume that she was talking about O, since he’d told her that he’d stolen the fellow’s identity on his first day at MI6—but funny enough, he hadn’t taken the man’s image. And every other time he’d taken the aspect of someone else it hadn’t been regeneration at all, but a _literal_ take over, an absorption of them into his own being that gave him their life force and (more as a side-effect than anything) their appearance. Tremas, Bruce the EMT, the deathworm morphant he’d used to get _into_ poor Bruce; etc. All that had been more about expediency. Desperate times and all that.

“I didn’t,” he said with an air of finality.

“Eh? ‘Course you did. Said you took his place after shrinking him, on his way to work.”

“That’s just falsifying records, I could do that on a mobile.” He waved a hand in her direction. “We looked vaguely alike, that was part of the reason I chose him. But I was already up and about, had been for a while.”

He only heard the gentle lapping of waves in reply.

“What?”

“Hm? Oh, nothing.” The Doctor blinked herself out of some reverie or other and turned back to the tidepools, where she started dipping the net about, collecting more seaweed than anything else. The Master, freed from her interrogation, shrugged out of his coat and laid it on the rock he was up against before going back to his somber sunbathing.

But it was too late. She was buzzing in his brain now, and after a moment he sat forward and opened his eyes again.

“What do you mean, you couldn’t do it on purpose? You’re the original article—it all came from you. Besides, you took the same classes I did. It's not that hard.”

"It is for me!" she complained, making her way through the shallows just to his left as she swung the net like it was some kind of dowsing rod. "I've never been able to get it right. I've never even really understood it."

“You just hold the image," he told her, thinking how deeply pleased (ugh) Borusa would be to know that the Master remembered his lessons after all this time. "Keep it there as the process begins, hold it as you're changing. You return to it over and over."

It wasn’t exactly a complicated concept, but then, they had skipped half of the relevant classes. He remembered that part, too—Theta claiming to be bored, asking if they couldn’t just ‘forget’ to go today. Theta pouting that the room was too hot, that the teachers always got angry when he asked too many (odd) questions, so what was the point? The mornings when Theta just hadn’t shown, and it had been up to his long-suffering best friend to go hunt him down.

(So nothing had changed, really.)

“Well sure, it _sounds_ easy when you're not actually going through it,” the Doctor said, now hidden behind a large rock to his right.

The Master thought he ought to leave it be at this point, but the observation was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “You can't control it because you don't _want_ to control it."

Her head poked up from behind the rock and she looked at him for a moment before her hand popped up beside it, holding a bright blue crab. She gingerly and attentively set it down on the top of the rock, like she was setting up a diorama, and stared at it as she said quietly, almost as though she didn’t want him to hear: “That’s not true.”

“It is,” the Master said. “Your attention is unerring when you feel like it. When you don't, it's because something doesn't matter enough to get your focus. You do it to yourself on purpose."

“Why would I do it on purpose?”

“Maybe you like seeing what happens. You experiment on yourself often enough. Or maybe…” They had talked about it ( _it’s basically dying, Koschei_ ), and he hadn’t understood how Theta could speak of it so knowingly, having never been through it before. Funny, that. “...you hate having to change so much, you can't face it. You get too attached.”

And just like that, as though she could pick up on his thoughts, the old argument was revived. “It does feel like dying, doesn't it? Everything you are goes away.”

The Master shrugged. "Or a return to form. Ageing makes us all dead strange." After all, what else would you call the bending and scraping he’d done on the last round. Teasing and prodding and _crying_ (in _front_ of her), wondering what it would have been like if he had agreed. If that boy had said _run_ and he had said _yes._

Better to have things as they were, to know the lie for what it was.

"I guess my last try was kind of perfect," the Doctor mused after a long silence in which she stared at the blue crab. For it’s part, it seemed happy to sit there waving its little eyestalks around. "I was content with who I’d been, mostly, but I wasn't fighting it either. Other than maybe not regenerating at all... I was ready. Even gave myself some good advice." Another moment passed, and then, "Oh!"

“What?”

"That's what I was thinking about!” she exclaimed, the crab scuttling away as she stood up straight under her sudden revelation. “When I regenerated, I was thinking about how I wanted to come out! And it worked!” She glanced down, taking stock of her body. "Well, some of it was a surprise. I wasn't thinking about how I wanted to look, I was thinking... about who I wanted to be. What I wanted to value, and hold to and, and... and I am. I am those things I told me to be." She looked at her hands—littered with crab claw pinch marks (bleeding in a few spots) and sand—turning them over in apparent wonder. "I did get it right after all."

“Outstanding.” If he didn’t sound like his hearts were in it, that’s because they weren't.

“What about you?”

“What _about_ me?”

She frowned at him and his unwillingness to indulge her. “Did you turn out how you planned?”

“Personal timeline paradox,” he said, and when she continued to stare, he elucidated. “Can’t remember—there were too many of me there.”

“Hang on,” she said, and then she was leaving the tidepool behind and coming around to his funny little patch of shoreline, standing in front of him again. “You’re telling me that you died right after the Mondasian ship, and you were both…” She had her hands up in front of her face, shoving at nothing as though she could see the variables to her equation and didn’t like what they were saying. “But _how_ did Missy—”

“Can’t help you,” he reminded her. “It’s all jumbled.”

Sometimes there were flashes. Talking to himself (arguing? or was that laughing...). Lying somewhere and staring at the sky, feeling everything go dull at the corners. Sharp pain and resignation. It hadn’t been a good death, but it had felt… right. Awful and right.

Like a bad omen.

The Doctor looked like she was about to burst a blood vessel or release a primal scream (maybe both), but she shoved at him instead, which only made him laugh. She frowned, trying to parse the reaction, then ordered, “Tidepool. Looking at crabs. Now,” and stomped back to the water. Like this was a punishment and he should know what he did wrong. (He could guess.)

It took another two hours for her to decide that there was no point in being furious with him over something he couldn’t even remember, and by then, she had scanned and stalked and poked at several more forms of aquatic life—and been pinched by another crab. He’d followed her around at a reasonable distance, refusing to enter the water, eyes wandering frequently inland (she’d claimed that the place was uninhabited by larger lifeforms, but taking that at face value was asking to perish quickly and violently on the end of the tusks of some hungry thing).

Eventually, he was left sitting in the sand by her pile of dried driftwood, waiting for her to tire out. As the suns were beginning to drop behind the cliffs, he flinched sharply, out of nowhere, and snatched the sunglasses off his face. The barb wasn’t physical, either—his subconscious had gotten stuck on something the Doctor had said.

She wandered back a bit later, collapsing onto the sand beside him and mumbling something about bioluminescence, her hair salt-swept in a mess about her face. It only took her a moment to notice something off in his expression.

“What’s that for, then?”

“‘Other than maybe not regenerating at all’,” he said, repeating her own words back to her. 

She looked at him, then away, drawing her knees up to throw her arms about them. “Didn’t really mean to say that bit out loud.”

Sometimes he dearly wished that he hadn’t choked her at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Romantic as it was, once you’d gone that route, wrapping your hands around someone’s throat lost some of the urgency, the import. “You’re cross with me over a little regeneration amnesia, but you almost _committed suicide?_ ”

“It wasn’t like that,” she insisted. “And it isn’t suicide if you’re already dying. Not really. I was just so... tired. It felt like maybe it was time to be done with it. Let go.” She shook her head, as if pushing the thought (the feelings) aside. “And anyway, I didn’t, did I? Sitting here talking to you because I changed my mind.”

The waves curled around each other, overtaking and breaking on the shore, and they might as well have been his thoughts, each one colliding inward and pressing on his brain. The pain of it, thinking that he might have done everything he did—destroyed their home, left all those texts, infiltrated MI6, made nice with Barton, waited in fucking Australia—and never seen her again. Giving up was for other people (people like him, who knew it was all a joke and wanted off this tedious, neverending carousel ride), but _she_ had considered it.

“Do you know what I would have done to this universe in your absence?”

“Think I’ve got a pretty good idea,” she said, sounding amused and resigned all at once. “It’s just that I wanted it to be someone else’s problem for a moment. Someone else’s job.”

But the Master wasn’t sure that she did have an idea. The damage he could do, the havoc he could visit on anything she had ever touched or praised or adored. And he would. He would lay waste to every scrap of beauty in the universe if he ever found out that she hadn’t _tried._

“Hang on—” Her voice broke sharply through the building storm in his head. “You lied to me!” She was pointing at him accusingly, shoving her hair out of her face as though it was a terrible inconvenience to her argument.

“You’re not usually surprised by that.”

“But you did! You said you had never read _Lord of the Rings_ or _The Hobbit_ , but you must’ve done, because you called me Gandalf on telly in front of the whole world during the year that never happened.”

“It’s more fun to pretend I don’t get your references.” The Master felt himself grinning, pulled from his spiral by the delight of having fooled her, even simply. “You’re always so put out when people don’t play along.”

He was so fixated on the way irritation made her nose wrinkle that he forgot to watch the rest of her—an error that cost him when she suddenly dumped a handful of sand down the back of this shirt (probably a retaliation, although he’d believe anything at this point). 

She smiled at him. “How’s that, then?”

“Fine.” (Damp, gritty, sticking, sliding, gritty, coarse, _gritty—_ )

“Really? Not bothering you at all?”

“No.” But even as he said it, he was unbuttoning his waistcoat and shirt while she laughed at him. He peeled the garments off and shook them out, setting them aside on top of his coat, and when he turned back she was staring. No, not just staring, her eyes were raking over his skin like she could mark it by sight.

It took him exactly 3.17 seconds to remember that she’d never seen this much of his body in their entire lives, even when they were children. And, previous activities taken into account, and present curiosity noted, he could guess in what direction her thoughts had strayed. 

She hadn’t accepted their last scenario, and she hadn’t explained why either. (His first thought was that she simply meant to get back at him for leaving her alone before, but it wasn’t her style—too mean, more in line with his brand of petty.) But she also hadn’t offered an alternative. He had begun to wonder if she found the whole thing shameful, and wanted to forget it altogether. Given their upbringing (his first, her second), the lack of approval for any form of physical contact, he wouldn’t have been surprised. But seeing her now… maybe she just wanted a certain kind of push.

He turned his head toward the ocean. “Ever been skinny dipping?”

“No. Have you?”

“Once.” He glanced back and found her looking downright peaky (she did hate when he managed to have an experience she hadn’t yet reached). “Sort of a group situation, and it would have been rude to say no, so I just…”

The Doctor was feigning disinterest so forcefully, it had looped back around to interest again. “What, like an orgy?” she asked. His eyes gave a cheshire cat roll of faultless guilt. That earned him a frown, and she looked toward her pile of driftwood, nudging a stick with her toe.

“Wasn’t that interesting,” he promised, aware that it wasn’t her objection. He would have given more detail, but she didn’t request it. Then the silence settled in and he thought that might be the end of their day. He turned his focus to the sound of the ocean making its brief home on the shore and washing away again.

"So, are you asking me then?" she eventually asked the pile of driftwood.

He could just let her have it, be transparent, but what would be the fun in that? "Do you need an invitation?"

The Doctor bristled. "You could just say yes or no."

(Oh, there it was.) She thought she was being toyed with. Bless. "Yes," he whispered, meeting her scowl with twinkling eyes.

She blinked, clearly not expecting to get what she’d asked for, but incapable of parting with her glower. She did stand up, though, eyes locked on his, and started pulling her coat off her shoulders. He toed his shoes off (no socks, not in this heat) without standing, without a word, without taking his eyes off her. Technically, he was ahead, and he couldn't know if she had her own rules (did they have to be even?) for this sort of thing.

She was searching his face, probably wondering over his intentions, her hands slowing after she tugged down her braces. Not quite uncertain, but approaching that. Her fingers caught at the hem of her shirt.

"Second thoughts already?"

"Haven't had my first thoughts, yet," the Doctor said. But she pulled the shirt over her head, revealing a simple cotton bralette underneath, maroon with some scalloping at the edges.

“Wouldn’t have figured you for the lace.”

“I like a bit of flash,” she reminded him. Her toes curled in the sand as he watched her, his expectation clear, and then she abruptly pushed onward, dragging the garment over he head in a move that wasn’t exactly suave, but wasn’t without grace all the same. She stood there before him, the bra crumpled in her hand, chest heaving just a bit more forcefully than normal.

(And now they were even.)

"We have... different opinions on how lace comes off," the Master admitted after a moment, his gaze dropping to a point on the sand between their two sets of bare feet.

"What does it mean to you, then?" His shift of attention had been the right move—as soon as he looked away, she continued on, and a moment later her trousers were pooled about her feet. She stepped out of them, plucked them from the ground, and added them to her little clothing pile. Despite the setting suns, it was still warm enough for an errant breeze to catch at their bare skin, a nagging reminder of this mad undertaking.

"Not flash," he said. "Sort of... refined."

"Huh." She was shoving the bra into the middle of the mound, almost like she was trying to keep it safe between the other clothes. "So if lace is refined... ruffles are flash?"

"Ruffles are flash," he agreed. (The cuffs of her old shirts, the velvet, the opera cloaks…) "Cravats, too."

"Love a good cravat," she said. "Guess I'm less fussy this time around, though." It was getting darker, but not nearly so dark that he couldn’t see her clearly, even in periphery, the precise curvature of her calves, the taper of her ankles. When her knickers hit the sand, he saw their bold blue star pattern and swallowed a laugh. Not because it was humorous, but because it was so emphatically _correct_ that it tickled his throat. 

There was only one thing left for her to do—she started towards the waves. After a few steps, she glanced back over her shoulder at him. "Coming?"

The Master’s eyes took the long path all the way up her body. While they were both averse to the usual regalia that Time Lords cleaved to, they knew that clothing was about taking up space and communicating without having to speak. Without that punctuation on her person, and flanked by the enormity of an ocean, she was... unbearably small. He should have loved that. He _wanted_ to love it.

He got to his feet, stripped out of the rest of his clothes perfunctorily, then followed her trek. On his way, he laid his feet into each and every one of her footprints (obsessive, but that was hardly new), all the way down to the water's edge. She was already submerged up to her breasts, calling out for him to join her, making some running commentary about the temperature of the water. By the time he reached her, she was bobbing up and down with the pull of the tide.

“Skinny dipping!” she said as the ends of her hair dampened with each passing roll of water. “Told you I’d do it.”

“Sorry, are you pretending this was a dare?”

Her mouth twisted up. “Maybe. Well, alright, yes. I was. I’m very competitive. Easier to psych myself up on a dare.”

Rather than argue the point, he slipped beneath the surface for a moment, returning once he was thoroughly christened by salt water, carding his fingers back through sopping hair. “Wave,” he said.

“What?”

“There’s a—no, too late.”

They were both unceremoniously slapped by a breaker large enough to pass over their heads. The Master giggled once they were out the other side, the Doctor popping up beside him, coughing and laughing too, utterly delighted. "Teach me to turn my back on mother nature."

For all that his suggestion of activity had been rather far from innocent, what actually transpired was downright sinless. They had a treading water competition (the Doctor’s competitive nature coming out again) and she teasingly rescued him from a “sea monster” (he definitely hadn’t yelped when a thick strand of seaweed had unexpectedly wound itself around his ankle), and because neither of them possessed an overly developed instinct to fear the dark (“Do you know I once ran into an enormous swarm of Vashta Nerada so thick they almost killed everyone in the Library?” the Doctor said, floating with her head tilted back so she could look up at a rising moon), they stayed out in the water until it was quite late. When they finally tired, they returned to the beach and walked naked back up to where their clothes and the Doctor’s pile of driftwood waited.

“Make us a fire, would you?” she said, spreading her coat out on the sand and sitting down on it, wet bum and all.

The Master was puzzled to find himself following those orders. It wasn’t his fault, he decided, as he laid the fire and got the blaze going with a bit of something he found in one of his pockets. He was (satisfied) lulled out of his usual sharpness and scatterdash thoughts by how much the evening had moved like their childhood—Theta and Koschei had never gone skinny dipping, but there had been plenty of excursions, secret treks outside the dome to explore places they were only supposed to visit on supervised trips. Theta had usually (not always) been the instigator, and Koschei had always been the one to remember practical things, like (sunglasses) warm clothes. And snacks.  
  
When he turned back around, he found that she’d taken his jacket and slung it about her shoulders. She was just sitting there, stark naked except for a suit coat across her back, knees drawn in, staring out to sea. He honestly didn’t know what to think in that moment, so he said, “Budge over,” and waited until there was a sizable patch of her coat vacated for him. And then there they were, side by side, their backs to the fire, great big purple moon rising higher in the distance.

Most people never got vacations this good.

“Can I ask you a question that you probably don't want to answer and will also possibly get angry at me for asking?"

The Doctor gave a lazy smile (had he ever seen that expression on this face before?) for once unbothered by his teasing echoes. “Go on, then.”

But he didn’t start with a question. “When we go through a regeneration cycle, we’re always ourselves. But physical form is… it’s messy, and when we seem different it’s partly because of age, but also because that brand new body—with its new brain, new nerves, new skin, new muscles and blood and bone—it alters our perceptions. It changes how things taste, how many endorphins we get from running, how sharply we feel pain, how we perceive color and light, how we’re affected by toxins. It remakes us.”

She shifted slightly, perhaps a little uncomfortable. “Right....”

“So which of your bodies fucked?”

He was still staring out at the ocean, but in his periphery, he could see the way her head snapped toward him, the drop of her indignant jaw. “You—you can’t just…”

“Why not?” he asked, peering over while trying not to smirk too broadly. “It’s a good game. I’ll play too.”

He wasn’t certain it would be an effective lure, but she perked up. “Really?”

“Cross my hearts.”

The Doctor hesitated for a moment, and then signalled her agreement with a caveat: “You start first.”

He gave a nod; it was fair. “Harold Saxon did.” Probably not much of a surprise on that one, but the reasoning might not be exactly what she expected. “Did you know that humans in some countries can have their marriages annulled if you don’t consummate them? Barbaric institution.”

“The marriage, or the reasons?”

“Marriage, of course. But you can’t get elected without one.”

“I noticed that.” The thoughts were ticking away behind her eyes, and he could guess what she was mulling over; on Gallifrey, marriage hadn’t been a social institution. More like a handshake business deal, a sort of alliance between people made (or forced by the High Council) to consolidate family power, especially if they intended to raise children. Which other races did too, of course, but other aspects found throughout the universe (ownership of one’s spouse or children, for example, joint assets, tax breaks, nevermind the complexities of romance) were not ideas that Time Lords were generally exposed to. “Pinstripes accidentally married Queen Elizabeth the First,” she told him after a moment. “...and then some.”

The Master blinked. “You accidentally married—and also deflowered—the Virgin Queen.”

“I was trying to find out if she was a Zygon imposter,” the Doctor explained, and it looked like she was fighting a smile now. “And got a bit… involved. It was great fun, though. She was very… well, I shouldn’t kiss and tell. Fuck and tell.” She said the word ‘fuck’ as though tasting a sour fruit, like the word felt wrong in her mouth.

“If you don’t talk now, I’ll just find ways to wring it out of you later,” he promised. “Mind you, not that surprising, given how handsy you were back then.” Everything about that body had been tinged with a shocking neediness that he’d been so desperate to exploit. She’d told him about Rose Tyler (so had Jack Harkness, under great duress) during their time on the _Valiant_ , so he knew that was a piece of it. But the Time War played its part as well. 

“I’ll just say that for someone who had purportedly kept chaste her whole life, she certainly knew a thing or three,” the Doctor answered primly, and there was a bit of an echo of that old persona in her tone. “We got rather wild.”

“Is that why you came out all baby-faced on the next round?” He had to wonder, with the oddness of that progression. “I _know_ he got around.”

“Baby-faced?” she sputtered, indignantly. “I wasn’t baby-faced. Did you even see that chin?” A pause and then, “But also yes.”

“Some ten-year-olds have large chins, doesn’t stop them being ten.” He reached a hand back to get it warmed by the fire. “Nyssa’s ol’ dad had some explaining to do—that body got aroused at _everything_.”

The Doctor blanched. “Gross.”

“That’s rich, considering how much you seemed to enjoy it.”

“Well, yeah I did _then_.” At least she wasn’t denying it. That wouldn’t have gone over, given his plentiful memories of breaching the Doctor’s personal space, and the visible reactions (and scents) that inevitably followed in those days. Attracted _and_ scared of him—such a lovely combination. “You were all menace-y. I almost fainted when I saw you in that cloak you were wearing in the Death Zone.”

“Which time? When you told me I faked my credentials from the High Council, or when you left me for dead with the Cybermen?”

“Wh—you know, the me that went with that you,” she said, running a hand through her hair as though trying to mime it. “Blond. And you’re not still sore about that, are you? We leave each other for dead all the time, it’s basically how we flirt.”

“So now you admit that?” He took a moment to picture her then, down to the lapel celery and that pinched school marm look of disapproval she used to get. “Did he, though? Because I was always so tempted to run him in.”

The Doctor suddenly looked like she wanted to hide her face in her hands or vanish into the sea air. “Well….”

“Yes?” he prompted.

“... Turlough.”

He couldn’t help the way his jaw plummeted. “ _No._ ”

She nodded, dismayed.

“That Eton mess of a ginger twink? The one who spent more time worrying about his own hide than any of the people or civilizations you were always trying to save?”

“I know,” she groaned. “He was just so obvious about it all the time, and a completely safe bet and I just…” She shook her head. “I did always wonder if you were going to try for it. Never got it from… you know. The other side.”

“If we’d had a history of it, I probably would’ve,” he said, bumping his shoulder deliberately into hers. “Couldn’t chance it without—you were a fainter back then.”

She gave in then, throwing her arms about her knees and hiding her face between them. “I was!” came the muffled-but-plaintive cry. “I had so much trouble with regeneration sickness on that round, I ended up all weak and victorian-y. That’s why I had to leave you behind with the Cybermen. It’s not like I could have carried you!”

“You left me behind because you weren’t sure if I was lying,” he countered. “You did that a lot, even before you were blond.”

“Doesn’t mean I wanted you to get killed by them.”  
  
“What about the rainbow-coated nightmare?”

“No,” she said, still muffled by her knees. “And I know what you’re going to say.” He arched an eyebrow at that, which she couldn’t see with her face hidden, but seemed to understand all the same. “You’re going to bring up Peri.”

He was. “Why would you ever keep her around, unless it was for that?”

The Doctor lifted her head with a sigh. “Because she was the only one who wanted to stay. I didn’t try it in the next body, either.”

The Master cringed to remember that besweatered curly goblin of a man. “S’pose that makes sense. You were too sneaky that time around.”

"Sneaky people don't have sex?" she asked, clearly too uncomfortable to keep using the other word. "My, this game is humbling."

"Do you really want me to bring up the other bit?" His head tilted to a particularly insolent angle. "About that one playing professor to teenagers? Because I assumed you'd rather not, but we could go down that road...."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Not all professors are as creepy as they seem. Some are just trying to recapture their youth."

He stuck his tongue out in reply, but to a very different effect, as though he'd tasted something nasty. "That's worse," he said. "Never catch me doing that when I was a professor."

“Does that count?” the Doctor asked, and her moods were so mercurial, the way she slid from embarassed to childishly annoyed to curious in the space of a few moments. “You weren’t really yourself. But that was your Time War body, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said. “So I never really got the chance to find out either way.” It had been all strategy meetings and unfathomable carnage in every waking moment. Before he ran. He could see her looking sharply at him again, although he’d turned his own gaze back to the water. There was quiet for a long time.

“Shame. You were pretty sexy.”

He wasn’t about to give away how much that pleased him. “And if there ever was a time for it,” he sighed. “End of everything. Twice. But they didn’t want me talking to you.” He was sure she didn’t know that part; his resurrection was contingent on his help in the war effort, but they didn’t want _those two_ (their term, as he recalled) teaming up against anything. At the time, he’d assumed that it was all down to the trouble they’d caused, at the academy and in their clashes across ages. Now he wondered if the reason wasn’t far more sinister—a belief that she alone could stop their reality from collapsing because she was apart from them, singular and godly. Wouldn’t want him to taint that, would they? “I saw you, once. Across the Great Amphitheater. You’d cut your hair so short I could barely see those curls.”

“They seemed too frivolous,” the Doctor admitted. “Velvet coats and curls and smiles. No place for them in the Time War. They didn’t even tell me they’d brought you back. I found out, eventually, but by then it was too late.”

“...He must’ve fucked, though. Right? Before the war, he had to have.”

Her shoulders pulled up around her ears then, the unweildliness of her embarrassment captivating. “Oh, yeah. Lots. Loads even. I was, uh, really into it. All the time.”

“Knew it.” He felt a little vindicated at that. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what about the one I dropped off the radio dish?”

She shook her head. “I tried it a few times, but I never liked it.” A blink. “Well, except once when I _really_ liked it. But that was because I had a really huge massive crush and you are not allowed to laugh at me about it.”

“On who?”

“... da Vinci.” She looked ready to hide her face again. “And he liked me too, so.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, assaulted by an image that he had _asked_ for, but truly never wanted. “That is… maybe the worst thing. That you’ve ever said.”

She cackled at him. “It’s your game, Master.”

“I regret everything,” he informed her, rubbing a hand across his eyes. She was right, though, he had brought this on himself, and now he was cursed with that knowledge until an untimely demise finally found him.

“Well, I’ve got to get my own back somehow. You know so much more about my regenerations than I know about yours.”

“True. But several of mine died in quick succession.” He’d never actually admitted that to the Doctor. For the longest time, he had locked certain parts of his life away as forbidden (he deserved something that was solely his own) knowledge. But the older he got, the less sure he became about that secrecy. “I was already on my seventh regeneration when I found you on Earth the first time.”

“So you’re not just a lot older than me, subjective time?” she asked. “Or… well, you know what I mean. I had wondered how you seemed to run out of regenerations so quickly."

“What, you thought that I’d spent millennia keeping to myself?” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Does that sound like me?”

Her eyes turned towards him again, glittering in the dark. "Not really. So what about that time we spent on Earth together? I liked that regeneration. He was feisty."

“Never got around to it,” the Master admitted. “Not for lack of interest, just too busy. Mind you, if I’d had to pick a threesome, you and Ms Grant would have been top of the list.” He couldn’t stop himself from grinning at that terrible thought.

The Doctor gasped, but it sounded more theatrical than some of her earlier shocked reactions, and she reached out to give him a bit of a shove. "Jo? Really?"

He let the shove knock him sideways for a moment, mirroring her histrionics without thinking. “She was easy on the eyes, stubborn, bit dim. She would have been perfect for that scenario, you can’t deny it.”

She shook her head. "I wouldn't have gone for it. Not that you weren't handsome."

The Master pressed a palm to the center of his chest, brow furrowed as though he were home to some deep and unyielding pain. “That hurts. How many fencing matches does a man have to instigate for you to take an interest?”

"That's just it though. For me, the fencing matches were the whole thing. If that makes sense."

“It does actually,” he said after a moment’s consideration, bothered for the fact that it genuinely did. “Rapier-sexual.”

She smiled at him, the firelight illuminating one side of her face in flickering oranges and golds. And then she leaned in and kissed him. It was just a little peck, something that he could imagine his old fencing partner doing, for a friend or someone perhaps more dear. He wondered if they’d be surprised, the two of them from long ago, to know how it had turned out. Somehow, he thought not. 

In the not-so-far distance, something roared. Something that was quite large, from the depth of its cry. Something that probably had tusks. They turned in unison to look over their joined shoulders.

“You said uninhabited,” he reminded her, glaring into the brush.

“I did, didn’t I?” she said. “‘Course, might have mixed that up with the neighboring planet.”

“You. _What._ ”

She gave a very high, very nervous laugh. “Fancy a race back to the TARDIS?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, they did run back to the TARDIS naked, carrying piles of clothes. They had a good laugh about it after, though.
> 
> You folx are the most wonderful readers and commenters ever. Seriously, we adore you. When we started this, we were like 'lol no one's gonna read this, neither of us has put fic out into the world in years, it's cool', but you did, and we are humbled.
> 
> Next Week: Space racing! Console choreography! Hair pulling!


	7. Not What a TARDIS is Designed For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A race, a crash, a little more than the Doctor bargained for.
> 
> Knees are traitors.

“This is not what a TARDIS is designed for,” the Master drawled from his spot on the honeycomb steps.

He was right, of course, but the Doctor had hoped to get at least little enthusiasm out of him for her reckless and daring scheme. Or if not that, maybe a fight? _Something._

After the beach, she and the Master had reached a sort of detente. (Detente was a good word, very descriptive and useful, she loved detente.) They would come into contact now and again, in the labs, or the console room, or the kitchens, and then part just as easily. Their conversations were fine, with only minimal bickering, but the whole thing rather felt like a holding pattern. Like they were two planets passing in each other’s orbits but never colliding. And as terrible as it felt to admit it, the Doctor was in the mood for a crash.

(Okay, so she loved the _word_ detente, but actually being in one was rather less than exciting.)

It wasn’t as though the Master had anything else going on. As far as she could tell, he spent most of his time reading, messing about in her computer lab, and building (for burning, she assumed, or maybe just out of sheer morbidity) the occasional odd effigy. The Dalek one had been all manner of impressive, full size and everything—it had scared the daylights out of her, and he had laughed for a solid hour. Really, she could have forgiven him for it if only it had led to something _more_. As much as she had been reluctant to push him, _afraid_ to push him, if he was going to keep dodging her advances, then… well, the Doctor would have to push him.

“That’s never stopped me before,” she pointed out, shoving her coat back so she could rest her fists on her hips. “Or you.”

“What is that?” he asked, leaning back on an elbow and waving an index finger at her. Seeing her confusion, he clarified. “Sort of... exasperated Peter Pan thing you’ve got going.”

The Doctor looked down at her posture. As insults went, it could be worse. Considering the things he was willing to say about her in other moments ‘exasperated Peter Pan’ was practically a compliment. And she wasn’t going to make it that easy for him to divert her attention.

“You’re telling me you don’t want to beat a galactic record?”

“I think you’re supposed to crow now.”

The Doctor huffed. “No, Peter Pan crows when he’s feeling excited, or accomplished. Not annoyed with you.” Still, she let her arms drop. “Come on. Why not?”

Now the Master was glaring at her, though not in a way that suggested active malice. If a glare could be bored (disappointed?) he’d somehow managed it. “Go on. There’s a carrot in here that you’re waiting to drop, I can see it.”

What? How could he see that? The Doctor backpedaled, feigning a more casual demeanor. “No idea what you mean. I just thought you’d enjoy flying the TARDIS through a multi solar system racecourse filled with black holes and asteroid belts and set a new record for best flight, but if it’s not your thing, it’s not your thing.” She tucked her hands in her pockets and strolled around to the other side of the console, just in case she couldn’t keep her face in check.

When she peeked back around again, he was laying back, staring up at the curvature of the ceiling. “Carrot,” he said.

“If we’re going to fly the TARDIS together,” she pointed out, “it means I’ll be turning off the bio-locks.”

He gave an uninterested huff. Fine. She’d give him the carrot (and a really tempting one, if she was any judge of him at all), but she wished he hadn’t figured it out so easily. “I’ll let you be in charge. You fly, I’ll assist.”

“You want to play co-pilot to me with your own TARDIS?” He sounded like he was about to laugh. The Doctor wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not, but at least she’d engaged him. “That’s a funny death wish you’ve mustered up.”

“I taught you to fly,” she said. “Think I’ve got a pretty good idea of how it’ll go.”

“You taught me to crash,” he countered. “But I was talking about what I might get up to with control over this thing.”

"Are you planning to break our deal already, then?" she asked. "Or maybe just fly us both into a sun out of spite?"

He perked up. “That would be fun,” he said, and now that he was enthused the Doctor was worried that maybe this was actually a horrible plan. Maybe he _would_ choose such an ignominious end for them both, just to (win) teach her a lesson.

"It would be boring," she told him, hoping to put him off the thought. Still, what was this entire experience about, if not her (both of them) taking a risk? She took a deep breath. "Up to you I suppose."

Somehow, without warning (how did he always manage to do that, and why did it make her stomach swoop to suddenly be looking just that little bit up at him?) he was right beside her. “Oh, go on then. If you’re not going to indulge my murderous fantasies even a little, I’ll have to amuse myself.”

It wasn’t in the Doctor’s nature to hide her elation, but she managed to keep a straight face as she reached over and flicked a switch. The console burbled and flickered, adjusting to her command, disengaging the bio-locks and releasing control to any hand that had knowledge to fly the TARDIS.

A holographic map also popped up, showing them the six solar system long course known as the Dicomian Dash—a daringly plotted-out route that circled planets and dodged black holes, wove its way through asteroid fields and patches of cosmic radiation. In order to keep to the very specifically designated path, a canny pilot would have to play with gravity, swinging just close enough to planetary bodies, at just the right angles, to slingshot their way along with the aid of ship’s propulsion. Too close and they could be dashed against asteroids or sucked into gravity wells. Too wide and they’d finish the course too slowly. The goal was to hug the turns as tightly as possible, in order to finish in the shortest amount of time and distance.

The Doctor watched the Master carefully as he studied the map, his eyes skipping in every direction, mouth (she wasn’t watching his mouth) moving imperceptibly as though working through a soliloquy at breakneck speed. “What’s the standing record?” he asked.

“Twenty-two minutes, eight seconds.”

He whistled. “Really?” Then he pressed his lips together, rocking back on his heels. “Probably cut two minutes off that.”

The Doctor bit the inside of her cheek in an effort to play it cool. “Two? I thought a minute forty.”

He shook his head, still staring at the holographic stars. “Two.”

If she said ‘prove it’ that would be too obvious, wouldn’t it? “Show me.”

He backed away toward the other side of the console, turning the three small wheels that opened up the TARDIS engines. “Angle at thirty-two degrees, right at the edge of that moon’s gravity, then throw the oscillators. All of them.”

 _Yes_. The Doctor dashed around the other side of the console to follow his orders, spinning levers and smashing buttons. The TARDS lurched as she threw the oscillators, smoke rising from the grates below like a question. “Just a game, old girl,” she promised. “It’ll be fun, you’ll see.” They all took so much persuading.

The Master lifted a foot to flip a navigation switch to his right, holding down a bright green pulsing dampener with one hand and using the other to crank the sub-dilation lever. The drag finally kicked in, knocking them both against the console. “Engage the vents,” he called over, and the Doctor grasped a cord, pulling it twice, sharply, until the motor revved into gear.

Pleased, she risked a glance over at him, grinning like a fool, but he had already ducked behind the rotor. The sound of a few clicks and snaps brought the gravity magnets online, and they shot away from the third planet’s surface like a pinball being spat into a machine.

“Nice one!” the Doctor laughed, delighted. 

“Yeah, but there’s an asteroid belt ahead so hit the dimensional pitch regulator, and do _not_ keep it level.”  
  
“I’m not sure I ever have.” The little crystal model TARDIS lit up as she set it in motion, before running around to the other side to check the readings—but the TARDIS lurched again, compensating around a few scattered space rocks on the outside of the belt, and it pitched her farther than she meant to go. She collided backwards into the Master, who caught her around the waist and pressed her up against the console with the weight of his body.

“Careful,” he murmured against her ear. And then he was gone again, around to the next panel, hands hovering over the controls. “How are you supposed to control the pitch when your elevator mechanism is a ball?”

“Usually I just let the TARDIS handle it,” the Doctor admitted, clinging to the console and not thinking about how warm and solid his body had felt when she was pressed against it. “Switch jobs? I’ve got a knack with the ball.”

“All yours—get us on an angle, forty-eight degrees against the center plane, and don’t overdo it, or we’ll grab the gravity of that black hole all wrong.” He slid back to her side, hands flitting over dials and buttons as the holographic map shifted to show their position, two solar systems down the course.

The Doctor moved as well, palming the ball and rolling them into a (rough) forty-eight degrees (forty-seven and four fifths, but who was counting?) before glancing over at the Master’s hands. “That’s not the secondary thrust.”

“It is.”

“No, that’s the exhaust bypass. Secondary thrust is the yo-yo.”

“Why—” The Master stopped himself with what appeared to be great difficulty. “This is what happens when you indulge a _machine_ on its own specs.” He turned the yo-yo as the TARDIS ripped away from the black hole’s pull and on toward the next planet (third solar system), a hyperdense crush of magma and ash.

“I think she’s earned it,” the Doctor said. “She’d been a slave of the Time Lords for long enough.”

A cruel snort was all she got for that train of thought. “Right, you’re two of a kind. Never tell anyone what you want, just hint like it’s profound to lack specificity.” He reached up to jab the condenser relay. “Take it down—we’re going to arc around the south pole.”

Oh, that was a clever move. She was distracted by his comment, though. “What do you mean, lack specificity?”

“Like this little race; you spent the whole morning trying to wheedle me into it instead of saying what you were after.” A warning light flashed to the Master’s left, lending him a dramatic red glow. “I said _down!_ ”

The Doctor grabbed at the controls, bringing them down just in time. (Oops.) She wasn’t going to apologize, though, for that or for whatever nonsense he was on about. “I thought you would enjoy it. So I asked you to do it with me. Don’t know what’s so underhanded about that.”

The drag of gravity was getting harsh again, and he was clinging to the edge of the console, teeth clenched. “The part where you don’t admit it’s what _you_ want.”

“Obviously it’s what I want.” She rolled the elevator mechanism, countering with the TARDIS’s mass to ease the pull a little. “Why would I suggest something I didn’t want?”

“Not the point,” he muttered, reaching over to the next console panel to increase primary thrust through the arc. “Tricky braking coming up on the fifth solar system, be ready.”

The Doctor looked away, bracing herself. “I’m not going to beg you, if that’s what you want.” (Down on her knees for him, saying his name in front of everyone, just so he’d have a civil conversation with her instead of murdering all those terrified people.) It was not going to happen.

“As gorgeous as that would be,” (he was picturing the same thing, she just knew it) “I don’t think I said anything about begging.” The Master pushed at the sixth-gear lever above the yo-yo, but it got stuck. He leaned back and kicked it into the upright position. “Gravity well, brake hard to port.”

The Doctor braked, and the TARDIS lurched. “It’s not like you’re going to pay any attention to me unless I annoy you into it!” she called over the whine of the engines and a grinding noise (it was probably fine) she didn’t know the source of. “I don’t know why you even agreed to stay if you aren’t going to _do_ anything!”

A few more cranks and they were shooting off toward the (sixth solar system) next star. “Agreed to stay? _Agreed to stay._ ” An alarm went off to the Master’s right, and he reached under the console and yanked out the wires, stopping it cold. “Is that how it went, then? Me agreeing, affably, to be your special inmate until you’re bored of me?”

“Don’t rip things out of my console!” she snapped in return, even more furious because he had a point. She’d been thinking of the Deal as an agreement to spend time together, a mutually desired truce, but all it really meant was that he got his prison cell expanded on condition of good behavior. The realization was bitter in her throat. “I guess it’s my fault for assuming you might, for once, actually get something out of all this.” She was rewarded with a sharp, high-pitched laugh that somehow sounded much more dangerous than his usual tenor. Shivers of anxiety ran up her spine at the sound, her body trying to warn her of the peril.

“Oh love, you must be joking.” His eyes remained fixed on hers as he brought a fist down on a silver thrust booster, spinning them out wildly. But the Doctor rolled them to match the centripetal force, and then suddenly the TARDIS was singing beneath them, around them, as the conflicting thrust and gravitational pulls came together to propel them forward at tremendous speeds. She propped herself against the console as she caught her breath.

“It does nothing for you then, does it?” For a moment she’d thought about letting the whole thing go, but she found that she couldn’t, even with the momentary harmony buzzing around them. (Or maybe because of it.) “Even having me all to yourself?” She supposed, as she watched the Master roll the yo-yo and pull the primary thrust coil, pushing them toward the heat of a red sun, that she wasn’t suffering enough. Pain was probably the only part of her he wanted anymore.

“Did you want it to?” he asked.

The sun blazed on the map, growing larger as they closed in. The Doctor bit the inside of her cheek again, holding back the admission. If she gave him that, what would he do with it? (Then again, how could he not know?) The words burned in her mouth. ( _It's all I've ever wanted._ ) 

His hand was floating over the release lever, but he was making no move to engage it. She realized that he was waiting for something—for her? For a sign? For death to overtake them? She couldn’t be sure which, but he seemed frozen to that spot, his lips parted in a silent query. He was actually ready to let them die like this ( _fly us into a sun out of spite_ , she’d said, but as a _joke_ ) she realized. It was still extraordinary to see, after all those years filled with body-snatching and Lazarus class rings. The Master had been angry at her on the beach, after she’d admitted that she’d once considered letting go—but his new interest in death was something different. Something the Doctor couldn’t quite understand.

(He didn’t understand her either. They knew each other so well, but they didn’t _understand_.)

“I… I can’t…”

“ _Why?_ ”

The sun expanded on the map interface, and the Doctor could almost feel the heat. It reminded her of another sun, a living sun, that had once burned through her hearts and nervous system (though a different nervous system, and different hearts) and she shuddered. Brighter and brighter the heat came and the light came and the TARDIS alarms (those he hadn’t pulled out) began to blare. _Burn with me_ , that sun had said, and that’s what the Master wanted, too.

She tore away from the screen. Met his gaze. “Because I already did.”

Something lit up behind his eyes (understanding? recollection?), and he took a sharp breath. Then his hand came down on the lever, the TARDIS shuddering and banking hard, too close, perhaps close enough that they wouldn’t escape that sun’s waiting embrace—

“And you said _no,_ ” the Doctor told him. Maybe it was the threat that drew the rest of the admission from her lips, or maybe the dam had just broken and it was all coming out now, whether she wanted it to or not. “You said no, and you left, and I can’t even be angry with you for it because you don’t remember!” There was a creak of strain, a vibration beneath their feet, steam was billowing from the ceiling, and maybe this was how he beat her, just making her angry enough to die doing something that should have been fun— 

And then the alarms went silent and the creaking ceased, and they were out. Clear and safe as houses, at the end of their run.

Her breath came in ragged gulps, but the Master was grinning at her. Why was he doing that? She had expected some kind of reaction from him, derisive or dismissive or cruel, but he just seemed… well, she didn’t know what he seemed. It was unnerving.

“Check the time.”

Reluctantly she dragged her gaze away from his face (that devilish smile) and... “Nineteen minutes, fifty three seconds.”

“Ooo…” He gave a short hiss of delight. “Fifteen seconds better than I guessed for. Underestimated how long you’d go for that near-death experience.”

“Well I like to live a bit on the edge myself,” the Doctor began, when her brain (to be fair, they’d flown awfully far, awfully quickly) caught up, everything stuttering suddenly into place. “Hang on, did you do that on purpose? That whole conversation just to drag out our time in that sun's gravity?”

He was still grinning, oh, she could _smack_ him, violence was wrong but she really could, he’d dragged that whole confession out of her as a trick (of course he had, and she should have known better than to let him, she _did_ know better) and her hand came up before she stopped herself. It was an awkward aborted movement, and he noticed.

“Did you almost try to hit me?” he asked, chest heaving.

“No.”

“Pretty sure you did.”

She desperately wanted to break contact, stop staring, but she knew that if she turned away she'd lose even more ground, and she would not have it. It was her fault, anyway, she knew that. She’d been asking for this. Conflict, a crash. Only he always seemed to be having a different fight than she was.

The Master stepped around the console (nudging aside a sparking wire with the toe of his shoe) until he reached her, breaching every form of personal space the Doctor could name (and she could name about seven of them, if she tried) and making her tilt her head just that little bit once more. “Try again.”

Her brain, scrambled by adrenalin and irritation and vulnerability, clambered to catch up. The impulse to violence had already ebbed (it wasn't her, never her, that’s why she’d disavowed her own name to that last Time War regeneration) but she raised her hand anyway.

He caught her by the wrist.

A new, divergent (better?) kind of adrenalin surged through the Doctor. She tested the grip immediately, trying to throw him off balance. He didn’t budge from the spot. He did laugh, raising her hackles for a moment until the quality (a different sort of laugh than the one she normally elicited from him) fully registered. He sounded... pleased, but not malicious. Somehow, it almost seemed like he _wasn’t_ laughing at her expense. Not sure she understood, and finding herself unable to break the hold, the Doctor swung at him with her other arm. He caught that wrist too.

Now, the Doctor was perfectly capable of fighting dirty. If she’d really wanted to get free, she could have stomped his toes (her boots had thick heels, and he was wearing dress shoes) or headbutted him, or gone for a knee to his sensitive bits. There were even a few Venusian aikido moves that would have yielded results. But all those options required one thing that she suddenly realized she didn’t have—the desire to escape.

Still, she couldn’t just give over, so she planted her feet and renewed her attempts to twist away. The struggle was short lived, however; he released her abruptly, sending her reeling forward, then caught her face in his hands (as she once more fell against him) and kissed her. For a moment, the Doctor thought she heard the cloister bell, but it was just her own blood singing in her ears, and he was still so warm (hot, burning even) and he tasted like losing and winning all at once.

Maybe that’s what a truce was, in the end.

Her fists thumped against his shoulders as if to push him off, but her mouth was already betraying her as it tried to devour him whole. His hands fell, gripping her by the hips, and he pushed her backward, back and back until she made contact with the console. Lust shot through her at that, and the Doctor heard herself gasp.

In so many ways, it was like being newly regenerated all over again. She knew vaguely what she was like, what she wanted and didn’t want, but so many of the details were surprising new discoveries. And she was still trying to figure out what it all meant, what the push and pull of their respective gravities were doing to each other—she didn’t want to yield to him, but then, this didn’t feel like yielding, even if it was the pressure of his arms that had placed her there, flush against the console. It actually felt more like _him_ yielding to her, as though something she had done (what had she done, she needed to figure it out) had convinced him to give up his stoic distance for a moment.

She grabbed at his clothes, drawing him closer while his fingers moved along the curve of her belly, and it took her far too long to figure out the plot; he was unbuttoning her braces from her trousers as he sucked on her lower lip (distracting, that) before moving onto the trouser fastenings themselves.

His earlier words were bouncing about in her head— _this is not what a TARDIS is designed for_ —but honestly, how could she be bothered to care? She heard herself make a sound that should have been scolding but just came out hungry as he started shoving fabric down her thighs (and oh, it wasn’t frightening _at all_ , being exposed like that). She thought she was making a fairly effective go at snogging, until a warm hand curved around her _bare bottom_ and she bit down hard on his lower lip in shock.

He winced and chuckled at the same time, tilting his head back to get a better look at her face. “No good?"

"No… or I mean _yes,_ I mean—" She sucked in a breath. "Unexpected."

“So I should prepare myself for abuse whenever you’re surprised,” he said with a sage nod. “Got it.”

"You don't seem very put out about it," she murmured, but traced the offended lip with her tongue a little as apology. "What are you after, anyway?"

“This very second, or overall?”

This was just him being vexing on purpose and the Doctor needed not to feed it. It was hard to play disaffected with her trousers and knickers down around her ankles, though.

“Overall.”

He didn’t answer her. What he _did_ was sink down before her, nudging up one of her knees so that he could get her trousers and knickers over a boot and free her legs up. His lips (the prickle of beard) brushed her thigh, eyes roaming her skin. The Doctor didn't like cursing very much, but she spoke a great deal of languages so it was really impossible not to pick up some expletives along the way—a few tumbled out of her just then.

"You're not serious," she gasped. It would occur to her after the fact that if she’d had any intention of stopping him (which she hadn’t, not at all), that would have been exactly the wrong thing to say. All she succeeded in doing was urging him toward his goal faster, and the next sensation she felt was the heat of his tongue, seeking her out.

Her mind spun, thoughts tripping over each other too quickly to be understood but basically boiling down to _oh no, oh no oh no oh_ ** _yes_**. The Doctor’s hands came up, one grasping for purchase at the console, the other sliding through his hair, fingers curling in the thick (impossibly soft, as it turned out) strands.

Just like that, she was encouraging him, and he sighed at the contact. His thumb slid slowly up her center to part her, to give him access to her clit, which he traced like a piece of art. Learning the shape of her before filling in between the lines. She whimpered a little, shocked at the delicacy. Each touch sent voltaic thrills through her body, soft and shivery, and she sucked in a breath as she slapped the edge of the console.

After a long and slow exploration (like he was trying to soak her up, in taste, in form, in the spaces between her gasps), his other hand glided along the inside of her thigh, between her legs until his fingertips reached the apex and brushed at her entrance.

One knee (her left one, the traitor) came up at once, turning out, offering him more space. After a moment's scrabbling, her foot came to rest on his thigh, boot and all. Being propped up like that felt more vulnerable, but more in control, too.

Oh and it also felt faintly desperate. Her hips rocked a little.

The Master’s eyes darted up to find hers for a brief moment (so self-satisfied, and how? they weren’t even done?) as his middle finger breached her up to his first knuckle and gave a wriggle.

She’d thought she knew how these things felt, but someone else’s fingers ( _his_ fingers) were an entirely new game. The way her body wanted to open up for him, the way her muscles fluttered of their own accord, seeking that pressure. It was only the tip of one finger, and yet it felt like everything, and she was already wet. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she teased, attempting to regain a little equilibrium.

He may have laughed, but it was hard to tell; it came out as a hum against her body, igniting sharp flames of delicious need all across her skin. It was almost too much, but before she could ease away from him to escape that pressure, his finger pressed in deeper and curled, and suddenly it was opposite, it was not nearly enough and she was bearing down all around him.

It was like the race, she thought distantly, pleasure thrumming through her. Conflicting gravities, mass and orbits that could so easily collide, or come in at too shallow of an angle and glance off each other. But if you calculated it just right—and then her train of thought was cut off as he curled his finger again. She groaned and arched, throwing her head back until her face was bathed in orange light that she could see even behind her closed eyelids. The fingers in his hair tightened, pulled at him.

“Oh, _yes_ ….” she panted.

He seemed to like the abuse—the harder she yanked his hair, the harder he curled into that spot inside her that made sensation spread out like a drop of water on a piece of paper. His tongue dragged in languorous strokes and he tapped that place over and over, harmonizing her responses until it began to feel like there was no separation between them.

She felt her body jerk as he pushed her towards release (or maybe she was dragging him along with her?) muscles reacting to firing nerves and surging endorphins. She could almost feel the oxytocin and fosatisin exploding from her brain, time pulsing across her tongue, and she needed him to move just a little to the right. She opened her eyes and looked down at him, jerking his head over roughly.

His beard scraped her thighs as he went, willingly, seemingly unbothered by redirection as long as he was allowed to keep going, eyelashes fluttering against his cheek while his tongue increased its pace just a fraction against this new expanse of skin. With his finger now permanently crooked, he tugged at her, beckoning.

The Doctor never could resist an enticing invitation, and with his tongue now lapping at that perfect spot, she could feel the climax beginning to build inside of her. Towed along by the eager gravity of a hungry sun, falling into that heat, and it was only a few minutes before she crested, shouting and curling up around the feeling, around him, clutching at his head not just with one but with both hands. She came so hard she felt her eyes welling, sweat bursting out over her skin in prickling cold-hot waves as she bore down with all the strength in her.

He buried his face against her body (she was worried about his ability to breathe for a moment, until she remembered that they had respiratory bypass systems), her hip gripped by his free hand, his eyes shut. It was a long time before he eased away, tipping his head until his forehead was resting against her abdomen. Still trembling a little, she moved her hand to catch him under the chin, tilting his face up.

She was unprepared to see the mess she’d left, streaking through his beard and glistening on his lips. It was obscene and very hot, as was the way her boot was still resting there on his thigh. His eyes were unfocused, dazed and searching. Then he produced a handkerchief from somewhere (pocket?) and proceeded to wipe his fingers clean.

Just as he’d promised he would.

She could have come again just from that. ( _Is this what a kink is_ , she wondered.) Her tongue dabbed at her own lips as she watched him, and not until he’d completely finished did she grab his shoulders and pull him to his feet. She kissed him (tasting herself there, and _oh,_ she might like that too much), sliding her hands across his torso and down to cup him through his trousers.

He was hard (like the last time), obviously straining against the confines of his clothes, which was why she found it perplexing (infuriating) when his fingers circled her wrist and dragged her hand away. She tried again, and when she was rebuffed a second time she pulled back to find his eyes.

She half expected mockery, some sort of joke he was having to throw her off the afterglow, but he looked… sedate. Resigned, even. And his eyes scurried away from hers.

“Master….” When even his name didn’t get his attention, the Doctor’s hearts skipped a little, a bit of anxiety worming its way through the haze of pleasure. She didn’t know what was wrong, but something stopped her from asking. He’d never answer, anyway.

“That was… _wow,_ ” she said. Praise had to be safe, right? “Think I might fall over, though. Need a bit of a lie down.”

His tongue darted out across his lower lip. He nodded.

The Doctor considered for a moment, then threw caution to the wind and reached out to (fly directly towards that sun) take his hand. There had to be a room close that had a bed big enough to share, and if they could do this, and if they could sit naked on a beach together reminiscing, they could surely lie down in that same bed for a while.

And if she tripped over the trousers that were still hanging from one ankle on her way out… at least it made him smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We fell behind again, we're so sorry! In our defense... *gestures at the world*
> 
> But thank you for sticking with us! We love you!
> 
> Next time: Too many Doctors! Champagne! Possibly voyeurism?


	8. Uncanny Voyeurism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A gallery opening, a swarm of Doctors, a shower.
> 
> With apologies to David Bowie. (Not really.)
> 
> There's a reference guide at the end of the chapter, just fyi. In case you need it!

The room was white.

Not ivory or cream or eggshell, but white, bright and blinding, so pure that it could trick your mind into believing it was blue. A murmuration of voices was gathering in strength, coalescing at the edge of his senses. There was a clink of glass and the pop of something (champagne cork? Christmas cracker? BB gun?) and vague, soft outlines in the distance.

He couldn’t move.

That in and of itself was not significant, though he didn’t know why. He only knew that it was not a surprising state of affairs for this place; bound to the spot, knelt on a small round platform, head bowed. He wasn’t gagged, but he couldn’t speak. There was laughter in the middle distance, familiar and rounded.

(not this again)

The outlines in his vision began to sharpen, and then they were two men. One of them was holding a crystal flute with bubbles, the other had something that was probably soda, pink with a striped straw bobbing up and down in its glass.

“And then there’s this poor chap,” said the fellow with the bubbles, and he spoke with the slightest lisp, a strangely fetching affectation. The ruffles (flash) of his sleeves rolled along the backs of his hands, and he peered at the platform with a pitying air, though he maintained distance.

The one with the soda removed a pair of glasses from the inside of his suit jacket, and propped them onto his nose. “Oh,” he said with a cringe, “that’s unfortunate, isn’t it? Does he just have to stay here like this?”

“Certainly he does,” he said the other, bringing the glass of champagne to his lips. “That’s what an exhibition is for.”

The one with the glasses was eyeing him cautiously, tip of his tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth, and he looked like he was about to say something (probably _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry_ ) when he was shoved aside by another. This man was painful, a migraine personified to look at. He had a brooch in the shape of a sparkling cat and a halo of curls that inflated the size of his head.

“There it is,” the new figure said, making note of the platform and referencing a pamphlet (information about the gallery? this was definitely a gallery) in his hands. He turned the paper over, but there was nothing on the other side. “Oh. Well. That’s a trifle disappointing.”

“Oi,” said glasses and soda. “You don’t hafta do that.”

“Beg pardon?” The halo of curls swiveled toward him. “It sounded like you were talking, but the way you blur words together all willy-nilly makes it impossible to understand a syllable.”

“Oh, don’t start.”

He devoted some thought, some effort, to moving on the small dais. Nothing happened, but he was absent any of the aches one would expect in his position. No strain in his knees, no twinging of the elbows. It was intolerable—without any pain, he was bound to give all of his attention to the patrons. On display, yet he was the captive audience.

The walking migraine was asking questions of the gentleman with the lisp, giving ample opportunity for a squirrely fellow in a gigantic fur coat tied up with twine to make his way over, dragging a chin wearing a bowtie along with him. “See, I told you, it’s sort of like performance art, don’t you think?”

Hands framed by a tweed jacket folded over themselves again and again, something of an anxious tick. “You could be right,” said the chin, and there was a deep, gravely quality to his voice that sounded like it belonged to a much older (wiser) man. “You know, now that I think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever really enjoyed performance art.”

“Me neither,” admitted the squirrely one. “But this one is an interesting specimen regardless, I think.”

“He rather looks like a friend of mine,” the chin said, mouth crumpling up into a little moue of distress.

Glasses and soda rolled his eyes. “Well, obviously. That’s the point, innit?”

“No, I mean a different… friend.” The chin with the bowtie looked genuinely unsettled now, his long fingers curling and uncurling against his palms as his hands hovered just in front of his diaphragm. It was as though he meant to reach out and grab hold of something, but there was nothing to touch. (Unless…)

“You shouldn’t worry,” came a voice out of nowhere. It belonged to a sweater vest toting an umbrella with a preposterous handle shaped like a question mark. He was leaned up sideways against a wall nearby, one ankle crossed over the other, looking vaguely bored at the whole affair. With zero fanfare, he produced a cup of tea (on a saucer) from the inside of his jacket somehow. “This one is new, but not very interesting.”

“Bit harsh,” said the chin, though he looked very intrigued by that cup of tea. “Do you recognize him, though, because I could swear we chat.”

The sweater vest shook his head. 

“Ah! What a impressive display.”

 _Oh no._ The neverending scarf had finally made his way over.

He was steering a young boy by the shoulders, a mousy thing in Gallifreyan Academy robes who had his head ducked to avoid interaction with anyone else in the room. Everyone parted for them, as though they were VIP guests who got some sort of special access. The scarf had eyes that defied the relational expectations of size and dimension, and his grin was a deeply disquieting thing.

“Didn’t I tell you, this would be just the spot! Very educational, yes?”

The boy didn’t reply, but it made little difference—the scarf was already talking to the chin with the bowtie about heat immersion and its possible uses in the preparation of cheese souffle. Before you could recite a full nursery rhyme, the majority of the group were locked into that discussion, dragging up questions about different types of immersion fields and how temperatures might be sustained in both open and closed systems.

Eventually, a cricket jumper in trainers joined in, eager to discuss how one might make a cheese souffle in a Zero Room. He offered his lapel celery to glasses and soda as a drink garnish, and tucked his hand behind his back while others talked, the very picture of earnest listening.

It was completely tedious, but then something strange happened; the boy peered up and met his gaze.

Impossible. They weren’t supposed to look him _in the eye._ He wasn’t even sure that they could, that it was feasible.

But the boy did.

“I was on the Titanic!” glasses and soda exclaimed. It seemed that the subject had shifted (not enough time had passed, how) to boats and sailing and generally being on the water. “Well, I say Titanic, it was actually _a_ Titanic, not _the_ Titanic. It was the starship version, in space.”

The boy was reaching out to touch him.

“My goodness,” said the squirrely fur coat, grinning mischievously, “he does speak an awful lot without saying a thing, doesn’t he?”

Glasses and soda nodded in agreement for a moment before catching on. “Wh—hang on—”

The boy’s fingertips passed the edge of the dais, and he thought perhaps the child was planning to prod him in the chest when that hand changed course. The boy was reaching out to touch his cheek, biting at his own lower lip.

“Honestly, I’m not sure why I came this time,” came the faint lisp, now standing over by the wall with the sweater vest and his tea cup. “I suppose we’re meant to engage with the artist, but it’s all getting rather muddled for me.”

The boy’s hand was so close he could feel its warmth—

Another hand reached out and snatched the boy’s arm, stopping him—and the whole room—cold. It belonged to a weathered older man, his clothes tattered and muddied with use and decay and sorrow. The drums beat all around him, thundering off the walls, making the floor shake. The battlefield had followed him here, and every single one of the patrons could feel it radiating from him.

“Best not,” the war said softly, his tenor stern, but not unkind.

He released the boy, who abruptly withdrew his hand and backed away, horrified. The child vanished behind the crowd, though the cricket jumper did call “Theta Sigma!” after him to no avail.

The war was gone by the time they all turned back. They didn’t seem to remember he had been there at all.

As the reception drew on, the group broke up again, milling about in pairs and trios—all except sweater vest, who seemed perfectly content to remain where he was—as they muttered their impressions to one another. He began to think they were nearing the end (this always happened, forgetting how to count) when two more approached the platform.

One had a brocade vest and velvet frock coat, a face worthy of statuary framed by a precise lay of curls. He looked quite a bit like the Emperor Hadrian’s boyfriend, really. What was that tragic young fellow’s name?

(Antinous)

Hadrian’s boyfriend was accompanied by a man with eyebrows that could probably shatter glass at the right frequency. He had a frown that didn’t reach his eyes, and the fashion sense of an orchestra conductor who’d taken the day off.

(oh, _Daddy._ )

(no, _no,_ wait that’s not—)

The orchestra conductor’s brow furrowed until it looked like he might have planted a garden above his eyes. “Oh no. What’s happened here?”

“He’s not at all what I was expecting,” said Hadrian’s boyfriend, and under the gallery lights he shifted, flickered out and morphed into a new spectre—the same face aged with his curls shorn, eyes haunted. It only happened for a moment, then he snapped back into focus.

“No, no, definitely not,” agreed the orchestra conductor. “This is all… it’s like the artist forgot something. It’s missing the vivaciousness of their earlier work, like they got lost somehow.”

(that part always stung)

Hadrian’s boyfriend looked saddened by this line of art criticism, the way impressive statuary often did. “I don’t think she’ll like this show,” he said.

“Not likely,” the orchestra conductor said. “But she’s coming over anyway…”

(out out out let me out of here)

She moved with the exuberance of a hurricane, and looked like the sky after a thunderstorm. She was bright, sparkling with light, made of half-formed dreams and eons of time that washed out of her pores like rainwater. It hurt to look at her.

She stopped right in front of him and grimaced.

“It’s all gone a bit wrong, hasn’t it?” she said, examining him the way one might check over a faulty piece of machinery. “That’s a shame, I was looking forward to this one.”

“Maybe next time,” said the orchestra conductor.

She shrugged. “S’fine. I mean, in the end, how was this supposed to impress me, yeah?” She locked eyes with him, smiling serenely. “I’m so much more than I ever thought or knew. And he’s just… scared of everything.”

He tried again, to move, to speak, to reach up and rip her windpipe from her throat, something that could stop all of this, or at least bring him blessed quiet and rest. He just wanted to rest. But there was a blur then, at his periphery. Black leather, rough hands, and no face that he could discern, all fuzzed out. He heard a new voice, another with long Northern vowels.

“You’re looking at this wrong,” the voice said, sounding affable but considerably less flighty than any of the others, orchestra conductor included. “Being scared is alright, really—we’re scared all the time. She just means that you let it rule you.”

(what?)

“Now, wake up!”

The Master gasped and snapped upright like the opening scene of a bad television show. It always worked that way when this dream rolled around, an abrupt awakening, followed by a few minutes of panting and the slow recognition of his surroundings.

It had ended differently this time, though. Usually, it closed on her.

He was in the room that he’d staked out for himself after she’d given him free range of the TARDIS. The walls were a deep burgundy, the solid wood bedframe a lavish four-poster of ornately carved vines and flowers—what humans would term ‘a sturdy piece of craftsmanship’ while nodding respectfully. He’d chosen the room for its fireplace, in fact. And the color palate. And it was the place the Doctor had dragged him back to after her little space race escapade (she’d wanted a bed, and had claimed that this one was the closest), the room in which she’d promptly kicked off her boots and rolled onto the mattress, dragging him down beside her.

She’d taken his side of the bed.

He could (should) have protested, but she had nestled down into the pillows, staring at him like she was tracing the seams of a puzzle box, working out how to open him up. He had pretended to fall asleep instead, hoping it would help her drift off too, and keep him safe from more probing, inane questions. He hadn’t actually meant to succumb himself, but the sound of her breathing (the soft snores) had lulled consciousness away. Now he was wide awake again, but she was gone.

There were too many covers on this bed, which normally didn’t register to him at all, but now he busied himself by dragging back each layer individually, marveling at them as he attempted to reach some sort of equilibrium in temperature. The impression of her body was still steeped into the sheets and pillows, making it impossible to pretend away her presence. But she had vanished, and somehow (damned nightmare) he hadn’t noticed. 

He needed a shower.

Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he found his shoes and slipped his feet into them. He was still in trousers, still in his oxford shirt and waistcoat, and when he looked down he saw… her coat. Sprawled carelessly on the floor, as though it had been disowned. His own jacket was laying over the back of a chair at an old card table, but she hadn’t thought to have her coat join it.

The Master made no move to pick up the discarded item, but once he reached the door, he noticed something else: a sock. Two socks actually, but the next one was lying a metre or so away. And beyond that, a pair of trousers, braces still half-attached. She’d left a trail of clothing down the hall, each piece abandoned exactly where it had hit the ground. There was the crumple of her shirt, looking like a wild snake emerging from some muddy hole, and then her cotton bra (the same one from before with the lace) up against the baseboard. Her knickers were stradling the doorway of another room, this one tiled and exhaling the occasional puff of steam into the hall.

There were all sorts of odd facilities on her TARDIS, but this one was certainly among the strangest he had come across; a shower bay, with multiple stalls of the sort you might find in a gym or a sports team locker room. The roar of water, the heaviness of the air, made it clear that she had opened every single tap, let each showerhead run despite only requiring the use of one. There were curtains for each stall as well, but none of them were drawn.

She was singing as she bathed.

“Saaaailors fightin’ in the dance hall! Oh man! Lookit those cave men go… it’s the freakiest shooooow….”

The sound of nine showers running at once drowned out the soft shuffle of his footsteps as his hand trailed along beside him, catching gently at each curtain, each barrier between the stalls. She wasn’t much of a singer per se, but she could carry the tune off, and he found himself mesmerized by the activity—did she do this every time she needed a wash?

He was one stall barrier away from her, and that barrier was faulty. If he tilted his head just so, he could see through a crack in the paneling—could make out the damp mass of her hair, the strong line of her back as it sloped down to meet the curve of her ass. She was scrubbing at her skin with something that looked rather like a high-tech loofa, turquoise in color and covered in little glowing beads.

“...wonder if he’ll ever know. He’s in the best-selling show… Is there life on Maaaaaaaaaars—I mean, I did tell David that I could answer that question, if he really did want to know. Not my fault if he wouldn’t take me up on it. The song could have been more accurate! But maybe that would’ve spoiled it? Maybe the question is the point.”

For a moment the Master halted dead still, thinking he’d been caught, but then he realized that she was only talking to herself. (This one did that a lot.) She turned around to face him, suds sloughing down her body, but still she didn’t notice he was there—her eyes were shut against the spray.

There was a natural progression to these events, a clear step-by-step program that anyone else would expect delivery upon. Exposure, intimacy, a certain amount of playfulness. They were laid out like hopscotch squares, numbered and easy to follow. He was meant to reciprocate, to give of himself in kind.

At the very least, he should let her know he was there.

It wasn’t the principle of it. He didn’t care whether or not she knew he was watching, whether or not she had agreed to it. That was the sort of thing good people fretted about, and he was not good. (Missy had tried, he remembered trying, but that clearly hadn’t worked out in the long term, or he wouldn’t have come out like…)

No, the trouble was simply in wanting without caveat. There was no duplicitous in it, no trickery to disseminate behind. It was too straightforward and, therefore, too powerful.

And hadn’t he handed her enough power already? ( _Once upon a time—no. Once upon several times..._ )

If she had any idea how badly he wanted her (the way looking at her could make his skin ache, the way her anger made him dizzy with arousal, the way her laughter made him want to set fire to whole planets), she would use that to her advantage. Wouldn’t she? Being her prisoner disinclined him toward giving her that further advantage.

But it would be so easy.

As he watched her humming to herself, her skin a cascade while the water poured over it, he knew that he could join her. He would find no resistance, and she would finally get all the pieces of him she’d been hunting down and pasting together, and he would finally know what it was like to feel her scream when he was buried inside of her.

And still he didn’t move.

( _You’re looking at this wrong._ )

The dream flitted back and forth at the edge of his consciousness, tapping on the windows of his mind, trying to break in. He tried to swat it away.

( _Being scared is alright, really—we’re scared all the time. She just means that you let it rule you._ )

No. No no no, none of that.

That wasn’t how nightmares worked. That wasn’t how any of this worked.

He felt his feet carrying him backward, away from her and oppressive steam and the sound of “Life on Mars?”, far far away as fast as he could go. And as he traveled deeper into the TARDIS, away from her warmth and her patience, he had to wonder—

—when had fear come to clutch his hearts in hand and bent his will to its desires?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A handy reference guide, in case you're not up on all the Doctors...
> 
> The lisp: Three  
> Glasses and soda: Ten  
> The migraine: Six  
> The squirrely one: Two  
> Chin in a bowtie: Eleven  
> Sweater vest: Seven  
> The scarf: Four  
> The boy: One (Academy Era)  
> Cricket jumper: Five  
> War: the War Doctor  
> Hadrian's boyfriend: Eight  
> Orchestra conductor: Twelve  
> She: Thirteen  
> Black leather: Nine
> 
> This one is a little shorter than usual and we are sorry. But! The next chapter is gonna be a doozy. We promise.
> 
> Next time: Sex toys! Surprises! Making good on one of those tags!


	9. Say Something Nice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chat with oneself, a challenge, a foray into the world of futuristic sex toys.

“Taking matters into my own hands, aren’t I?” the Doctor said. She was angry, and she had a plan, and she was talking herself through it.

Talking to yourself was both useful, and healthy, despite what people sometimes muttered under their breath when they caught her at it. Who should understand her better, or give advice that would fall closer to her own hearts, and anyway she was so often alone, without anyone else to chat with, so it was either talk to herself or bottle things up. And bottling things up gave her a stomachache.

(She’d had a lot of stomachaches since learning that the Master destroyed Gallifrey.)

“It’s not that I minded being watched,” she explained to herself as she dug through the big old walk-in closet attached to the gorgeous Edwardian-styled room, pushing shoeboxes aside (her eighth body had loved shoes far, far too much) in a huff. “That was the whole point of leaving the clothing trail, for him to follow it. And, you know, it was exciting. Feeling him there, watching. Even though I’m awkward this time around, even though I was naked—not used to being naked, even with the skinny dipping—I enjoyed it. Letting him think I didn’t know he was there. Putting on a bit of a show. I’ve always been a showman—wait… show- _woman._ Still can’t get it right…”

She ducked behind a mannequin carved of obsidian and gold (which, _why_?) and pulled a small chest out of the somewhat dusty corner.

“Maybe it’s just the thrill of being wanted,” she continued, frowning at the chest, speaking to the mannequin now. “Burns away all the weirdness and uncertainty. I mean… I _am_ thrilled. Because _obviously_ we’ve been drawn to each other forever, and what we look like is usually more of an afterthought. Even if I was funny-looking it wouldn’t make him less…” she glanced around cautiously, as though there might be someone eavesdropping, and leaned in toward the obsidian figure conspiratorially, “… you know. _Obsessed with me_.” She leaned away again, continuing in a more normal tone as she flicked through possible combinations for the lock on the lid. “But the thing I’ve realized in all of this is, it’s not just that—I’m pretty sure the Master thinks I’m _hot_.” And jackpot, because there in the chest was the treasure (heh) she was searching for. The Doctor began sorting through it, pulling things out and discarding some while stuffing others into her coat pockets.

“Never admit it, but I don’t know how to judge what I look like. I like this body. It's wiry and strong and good for running. Great hair. _Excellent_ knees. But is it handsome? Pretty? How do you even measure something like that, never mind quantify it? But then he looks at me—you know how I mean—like I’m a dish he’s about to consume. And I feel… powerful? In a way I haven’t felt in a long time.”

With her pockets full (and oh such lovely Time Lord pockets, able to hold whatever she needed without so much as disturbing the line of her coat) of secret weapons, she left the chest behind, gave the mannequin a wave and exited the closet, making her way out into the hall. A quick check-in with the TARDIS let her know that the Master was holed up in one of the larger dens in a far-flung corner of the ship, and she turned her feet in that direction.

Back to talking to herself, then.

“Like I said, always been a show-woman,” (yes, got it that time, snap) “always loved attention, a spotlight. So why not try it with my body instead of cleverness? I _really_ thought he was going to give in last time. I know he wants it, and I was so—” she stopped talking abruptly, because there were some things she couldn’t say aloud. Even to herself.

…She’d been so _ready_ for him. 

She had been certain that he was finally going to take what he wanted. Certain that he was going to strip off his clothes and join her under the water (she would have pretended to be startled, he loved startling her) and take her by the hips, drawing her close. Or maybe that he’d press himself up behind her, their bodies sliding, his breath warm even with the heat of the shower’s spray. Certain that he’d be hard and flush against her, that he’d finally give in and make this experience about both of them, instead of hiding himself behind her pleasure. 

And then he had pulled away. Again. And she was bloody tired of it.

In silence, she marched herself the rest of the way down to the Master’s hideout, her boots echoing in the empty halls, then banged in through the door and strode right up to where he was settled in an armchair with a book and murmuring to himself. (Was he reading _backwards?_ No, no getting distracted. Focus, Doctor.) She planted herself firmly before him.

“What exactly are you playing at?”

He continued muttering for another five seconds before the words sunk deep enough into his consciousness to gain his attention. His eyes flicked to the corner of the room. “Beg pardon?”

The Doctor reached down and snatched the book from his hands, tossing it back somewhere behind her where it landed with a thud. When he looked up (to protest or mock, she didn’t know which and she didn’t care), she caught his chin in her hand, squeezing hard. Hard enough to hurt, hard enough to drag his face upwards towards her with the pressure of her fingers digging into his cheek and under his jaw.

“Last night. Before. All of it.”

He snarled and for a moment it looked like he might try to strike back. But then his anger dissolved (retreated) behind smiling eyes. “Not sure what you mean…”

“Liar.”

“Oh dear, am I in trouble?” He pressed a hand to his chest as though he were worried, but the look he gave her said that he was laughing on the inside. She decided that she didn’t much _like_ him laughing at her, and her thumb dug in a little harder, the nail making an impression in his cheek. 

“You are in more trouble than you can handle.” At that moment, the Doctor would have loved to have her own paralisis field here on the TARDIS (give him a taste of his own medicine) but with the eye-for-an-eye option out of reach, she had to settle for muscle. She shifted her grip a little, drawing him up out of the chair with her own strength and a little bit of Venusian aikido. Forcing him to face her properly. “I should have known that being nice to you was a waste of time.” (That came out harsher than she intended—but she did mean it.)

“That’s what I keep telling you,” he grumbled, and his jaw set stubbornly, but his eyes were repeatedly creeping up to hers and darting away again. He couldn’t hold her gaze, or he didn’t want to, and actually, she liked that. Let him break first for a change.

She leaned in, pulled him closer, and licked a stripe from his cheek up over his brow bone. It was messy and weird, not sexy and yet sexual at the same time. Like her, really. She should have tried this before.

“Strip.”

It was satisfying, the way his lips parted in panic. “Sorry, what?”

“I said, _strip._ ” She released his chin and stepped back, just enough to give him the physical space to follow the command. He looked around the room as though just noticing his surroundings.

“What, right now?”

“Right now.” Her tone was tight.

He looked as though he meant to protest, but her stare brought him up short. She watched him reconfigure—it was another long moment before he said “Fine,” exactly as he had when she’d lured him to meet her in the Matrix chamber, petulant but incapable of resisting the call. Something fluttered down the Doctor’s spine as he started unbuttoning his waistcoat and she thought (not for the first time) that there was a good side to his obsession with her.

She stepped back, sliding her hands into her trouser pockets, watching him imperiously, but also with a hunger that she couldn’t quite disguise. Even in his reticence, this was something more than she’d had from him yet, something closer to the connection they’d shared on the beach than their one-sided (though delicious) sexual encounters. And she was thirsty (there, she used it right that time, hadn’t she?) for more.

He continued, shoes and socks, each button on his shirt, followed by his trousers and pants. Each item was laid across the chair he’d recently occupied until he was finally standing before her without that layered protection, the slopes and shadows of his body drawing her eye.

“Oh,” she said then, because he was beautiful. The long, strong lines of him (less wiry than her), the sweep of hair across his chest, the perfect shape of his shoulders. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips.

“You’ve seen it before,” he said, keeping himself still with what appeared to be some effort. (Letting her look. Oh, _yes_.)

“Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it,” she said, and just because it felt right, she walked a circle around him, studying. It brought something out in his expression that she had no idea how to read, but she liked the way his shoulders came back a little. She let her hand rise, one finger coming up to trace along his breast, and that lovely little bit of chest hair.

“Is there a plan here, or were you just hoping to have me at a disadvantage?” He glared directly at that fingertip, like he could burn it with a look. He couldn’t though, and she let her hand linger just to prove the point.

“There’s a plan,” she assured him.

There was a twitch of muscle as he clenched his teeth, hands arranged carefully at his sides. He tilted his head, feigning disinterest, pretending not to notice how she touched him. She scraped a little with her fingernails, then stepped in and kissed him, hard, cupping the back of his neck tightly. He made a cursory effort of resistance, his hands frozen midair, but his lips parted under the pressure of her, his head tipping to the exact angle she was looking for without instruction.

And it was good, it was so _good_ to slide her tongue between his lips, to demand that he yield the way he so often demanded that she yield to him. He tasted like starlight and ash, like retired dreams and lost hopes. She bit down on his lip, a quick sharp sensation. He flinched and forgot himself, wrapping his arms about her and pulling her body against his.

She went willingly, happy to give him something if he was actually going to show that he wanted this. Her hands slid down behind him, caressing his spine, the small of his back, the crease between his cheeks. She felt him shiver against her and a little sound of surprise escaped him, encouraging her curious fingers into a second pass. Then she pulled away, just a bit reluctantly.

“Go lie down on the sofa,” she told him, turning away as though completely confident of his compliance. “On your stomach.” The sofa was one of those wide sectional types, designed for lounging, and there was plenty of room on it for what she had in mind. He glanced to the piece of furniture as though it might bite him, suspicion writ into his posture.

“Go,” the Doctor instructed, slipping out of her coat. She was wearing her maroon rainbow shirt and no undershirt beneath, and she leaned out to watch him as she set the coat aside on a table. He moved to the sofa and sat, but was clearly hesitant about the latter half of her command, looking at the whole expanse of the thing as though calculating its dimensions and surface area (which was likely exactly what he was doing). The Doctor pulled a pair of gloves (thin, made from polysilk, an artificial but recyclable improvement on latex from the thirty-second century) and a small bottle from her pocket and turned to join him.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

He opened his mouth several times, considering responses and summarily discarding them when they didn’t suit. Eventually, he settled on, “What are you angry about?”

The Doctor cocked her head, trying to decide what (if anything) she wanted to tell him. “Do you really have no idea?” she asked, gesturing at the couch to remind him of what he was supposed to be doing.

“I have _ideas,_ ” he said, still not moving an inch. “Several rather well-formed ideas. Not sure which one is right, though.”

She put a heavy hand on his shoulder, bearing down with her weight. “Lie down, and I’ll tell you.”

It got her the capitulation she desired, though she couldn’t be sure if it was more the physical push or the possibility of an answer that had done it in the end. He stretched out across the cushions, arms reaching up overhead, head turned just enough to glimpse her out the corner of his eye. She kept her advantage, swinging a leg over his prone form and settling down with her knees on either side of his thighs. The cork made a little ‘pop’ as she drew it from the mouth of the bottle, and she let the sweet-spicy scent of its contents fill the space. 

The massage oil the Doctor had chosen was laced with an extraction from the seed pods of the senasit tree, which smelled divine and had a relaxing effect on the muscles of the body. Although an unpleasant deterrent to the local wildlife where the senasit trees grew, most humanoid species found the effects of the pods calming, rather like chamomile punched up to eleven. Even the Doctor felt herself easing a little as she inhaled the scent.

“Did you enjoy watching me last night?” she asked as she let a thin stream of the oil drizzle across his shoulders.

There was a brief tensing in his body that eased as the senasit quickly went to work. He sunk his hands beneath a throw pillow, perhaps concerned that they might give him away. “Am I supposed to feel bad for watching, or bad for something else?”

She gave him a sharp smack on his bicep.

“You don’t get to answer my questions with another question.”

He growled, but still said, “Then _yes._ ”

The Doctor paused to pull on her gloves (she didn’t want the senasit to relax her too much, not yet). Her thumb traced up his arm and down his shoulder where she found a knot to dig her knuckle into (and of course he was tight, every part of him was taut with anger and fear, not just his muscles), which she did with a combination of sympathy and vindictiveness. “You ran off pretty quickly.”

There was a wince as the spot by his shoulder blade began to give way. “Not sure if that’s a question or an observation.”

“It’s an answer,” the Doctor said, and the way the muscle responded to her touch was giving her a little zing of smug pride. “You keep leaving. Every time I think you’re going to give me something, you leave.”

He snorted even as his back continued to soften under her ministrations. “Sorry, did the multiple orgasms not count? Must’ve missed something…”

“You mean the distractions?” the Doctor countered, bringing her hand down to work a little lower, her clothed thighs dragging against his naked ones. “Lovely, enjoyable distractions are still distractions, you know.”

“And free range imprisonment is still imprisonment, love.”

The Doctor ground her teeth. She could smack him again for bringing that word (love) out in this moment. Instead she focused on the massage, letting the firm press of her fingers get a bit of the stress out.

“So you think you’re punishing me, is that it?” she asked, knowing full well that wasn’t the case. “Or maybe you’re gathering information to use against me later? Orgasms seem an odd way to go about it, really.”

“You would think so,” he said lightly, “until the frequency of your moans is all that stands between me and galactic dominion.”

The Doctor’s hands wavered, just for a moment, in their quest to knead across every inch of his back. He wasn’t serious, of course, but he knew so well how to sound threatening that it actually got to her a bit. “Well, that’s a funny sort of expectation.”

He laughed softly, and it sounded every bit as evil as he probably intended.

“That just makes me feel more justified in being angry with you,” the Doctor decided, shuffling back a little to give herself access to his backside and thighs. “But if you’re planning to use my moans against me, I’ll just have to deal with that when the time comes. Like I always do.” Her fingers traced under the curve of his buttocks, the firm muscles of his legs, and then in, skirting up along that sensitive inner thigh.

There was a shift in his arm muscles, but she couldn’t see his hands under the pillow—maybe they were clenching? Either way, his head snapping to one side was a potent cue. She tipped the bottle over again, letting more oil cover her fingers before continuing that teasing touch, getting a little higher each time until she was finally questing in between the cleft of his cheeks.  
  
She had to steal herself a little—the move was so impossibly familiar. She hadn’t touched anyone in such a way in a long time, and it was very likely that he’d never been touched in such a way in this body (or ever). And he was so warm, his skin blazing even through her gloves, but his shoulders had locked up again. Suspicion was creeping back in. The Doctor leaned down and pressed her lips to the back of his neck.

“Did you really think,” she murmured, “that I would just let you keep playing with me? This time it’s my turn.”

“You wouldn’t,” came his voice, marred with unease.

“What about me,” the Doctor asked, her breath sliding along his skin, “makes you think that?”

“You don’t toy with people.”

She snorted, honestly amused. “Don’t I?”

“No,” he insisted and he sounded sure, but his body… his body betrayed him, curling away from her as though he might vanish.

The Doctor eased her hand back a little, but her mouth perused him, finding his ear. “Well. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t toy with people. Because when I decide to do something—” she let the pause linger there a moment, pleased with her own theatricality, “—I commit.”

And then she was leaning back, adjusting her position until she was only astride one of his legs, pushing the other up to grant her the access she needed. One hand came down on his lower back, steadying him, and the other—slick with the senasit oil—slid up and in, finding the tight ring of muscle there and circling it. Finally making her full intentions known.

“ _What._ ” It was a question, a denial, and an alarm all at once.

“Was I being too subtle?” the Doctor asked, circling her finger again. “Which part isn’t clear?”

“The part where I’m not sure what your endgame is,” he said, peering back over his shoulder.

“Not sure why that wouldn’t be clear,” the Doctor said, with a distinct air of humoring him. “But if you need it spelled out…” she circled a third time, in the opposite direction, as he twitched wonderfully. “I’m going to fuck you.”

She… didn’t love how that word sounded on her own lips, but the whole effect was good enough that she didn’t think he would notice. And she wasn’t sure what other word would have sufficed, in any case.

She could see the (impossibly sexy and also rather flattering) roll of his throat as he swallowed. “And how were you planning to manage that?”

“I came prepared,” the Doctor told him. “Didn’t just show up with a temper, you know.” She tapped gently, wanting to send those thrills up inside of him. Her reward was watching his shoulders square against the sensation, even as his eyes squeezed shut.

She spent the next few minutes working him over, letting the senasit take effect before she began asking for that little bit more, working the tip of her finger inside of him. He quivered and his hands did whatever they were doing under the pillow again, but his body welcomed her all the same, muscles trembling and releasing, letting her sink slowly deeper and deeper until her other knuckles pressed against him.

There was sweat breaking out along his skin—and hers too, she realized, as her hearts picked up their pace sending blood rushing to a few particular places. The scent of him was everywhere, more alluring and powerful even than that of the senasit, filling her nose and her mind with him. With the Master, her Master, the one she was always losing, over and over. The one who took everything from her and yet felt like a future unwritten. He might never stand with her. He almost certainly wouldn’t. But she would have this, come hell or Rassilon’s ghost.

(Oh no, don’t invoke Rassilon, that was basically the least sexy thought of all time…)

She returned her focus to the task at (heh) hand, and went seeking for the spot that would make stars dance before his eyes. It didn’t take long to find it, and he let out a sharp groan in reply. An untrained ear might have assumed it was frustration, but she knew better, knew how to read desperation in the curvature of his spine and longing in his sharp intake of breath. And it was so very gratifying. Like it was when he acquiesced to her control and took his clothes off, or when she reached out into his mind and he agreed to meet her (in the Matrix chamber, at the top of the Eiffel Tower, on a beach full of crabs) just because he couldn’t let her go.

And yes his obsession with her was dangerous, and yes she felt responsible for those who died because of it, but _oh_ it was also heady and brilliant just then, and she felt a bit like a goddess as she curled her finger once more, and then again, making him moan and shake as the scent of arousal and pleasure rolled off of him. She leaned down to taste the side of his neck, to trace her lips across his cheek and steal a kiss from his mouth. Their lips slid together in a mess of want, his tongue, her teeth, and it was sloppy, but she _loved_ that.

That was the both of them, this time around. Sloppy but perfectly zealous. It was hard to tear her mouth away from his, but she needed to lean back for a better angle to keep working him open. The senasit smoothed the way for her to add a second finger, and to enjoy the gasp it elicited. Still, she found herself craving his voice. He never went this long without talking.

“You could’ve had me, you know,” she told him, finding an easy rhythm that had his toes curling almost immediately. “In the shower. I would have let you.”

“I know,” he said, and oh, if there were any doubt that she had him, here was her proof—his voice was roughened with lust, thrumming like a bass drum. She almost forgave him, except she needed that anger still. It was a part of this, part of them, and though the Doctor couldn’t sustain rage or hate the way he could, she still carried it within her.

Somehow, she had realized that letting go of those feelings was a disservice. A disservice to him and the person he was, so much of which wasn’t his fault (she didn’t absolve him, couldn’t absolve him, but after learning of the drums she would always understand) and part of which she might very well be responsible for. Her fingers worked deeper, and he was already so open and vulnerable to her that she could cry.

“I’m going to fuck you silly,” she whispered instead.

“Prove it,” he hissed, seeming to get some of his own back for a moment, arrogant as ever. That was both very satisfying _and_ a turn on, but she kept her composure. She gave one last crook of her fingers before sliding them free.

“Someone sounds desperate.” She tugged one glove off so that she could brush a clean hand through his hair. She also put a bit of psychic weight behind her next command. “Stay here.” (It wouldn't force him to do anything, of course—she just figured he’d like it.)

Climbing to her feet, she strode back to the table where she’d left her coat, grateful for bigger-on-the-inside pockets and also for choosing that table to leave her things on. From where he was, an armchair and reading lamp made it difficult to see her without getting up, and she needed a minute to strip herself out of her clothes and get everything else together.

The strap-on had a name, the Doctor knew, (because that was something people did, give names to the different styles and shapes) but she no longer remembered what it was called. She hadn’t bought it herself; it had been brought onto the TARDIS by a particular lady friend who liked to pull the Doctor’s hair and tie her (his) wrists to the bed frame. That had been in those last few good years before the Time War broke out, which might explain why everything had still been in storage, forgotten but well and safely packed away. She vaguely remembered wrapping it all up like some sort of ritual, saying goodbye to that life of pleasure and fun before stepping onto the battlefield that would change her forever.

(Was it strange to bring a used sex toy into this? It had only ever been used on the Doctor, so she didn’t think the Master would mind. He might even find it hot, and she had no idea where to obtain a new one from, anyway. Did they have specialty shops for that sort of thing?)

As she slid the silk and leather harness up around her thighs and over her hips, the wide, cup-like base settled against her body and she felt the receptors key into her nerve-endings, coming to life as its feedback program engaged with her nervous system. That was an entirely new experience—the Doctor stroked one hand carefully down the length of it and shuddered, biting back any sound that might give away what was happening. It didn’t feel the same as having one’s own anatomy of course (she certainly remembered what that was like), but the Doctor suspected it wasn’t supposed to. It was an experience all its own, meant for a body like hers, and she was suddenly rather excited to find out what it was like.

With everything snuggly latched into place, she caught up another, larger bottle and came back around to the sofa, where the Master was waiting. He was right where she’d left him, oil and sweat drying on his skin, throw pillow now dragged beneath his cheek. At the sight of her, he squirmed visibly, though she couldn’t be sure if that was nerves or a bid for increased stimulation. His eyes lingered on the phallus. “Why’s it green?” he asked.

The Doctor tried not to look sheepish. She had just put herself on display for him the night before, there was no good reason to feel exposed or awkward now. “It’s a nice shade of green, though. Isn’t—”

“I’m gonna stop you, because I can tell you’re about a half-sentence away from embarrassing yourself,” he said with a roll of his eyes. How he managed that level of aloof sarcasm in his current position the Doctor really had no idea, and it was as impressive as it was infuriating. Or maybe it was infuriating _because_ it was so impressive. She trailed her fingers along the silk tie running across her hips, then down to the leather strap below it, in a move that was half sexy tease, half self-conscious soothing.

(Honestly, the green really hadn’t registered until he mentioned it.)

“Doesn’t matter. It’s not like you’re going to spend much time looking at it.”

His eyes went bright at the centers. “ _There_ she is. Oncoming Storm.” The Doctor’s first impulse was to suspect that he was mocking her, but she could find no trace of it in his face or his voice, only a strange and slightly eerie eagerness. A dozen questions bubbled up in her mind but she pushed them aside. All that could wait. She was about to get what she wanted.

What they both wanted.

She grabbed the other throw pillow from the far end of the sofa and came back to him, caressing his hip and urging him to lift. He shifted back on his knees, giving her the space to wedge it beneath him, but before she let him settle, she turned her hand to find skin. He was hard as she’d hoped, and hot, and she suddenly recalled what he had said to her the first time he’d found her in an equally compromising position at the end of their chase: “How long have you been like that?”

He chuckled. “Soon as you straddled my thighs. Wasn’t that the point?”

Rather than answer the question, she gave him a long stroke, learning the shape and weight of him, letting him feel how good her touch could be… not that there was any doubt left. “Good boy.”

His head bowed at that, and he uttered something that the Doctor was fairly sure was a curse. She gave him another gentle tug, then climbed up behind him on the sofa. It took a moment to figure out where to put her knees, to find the right way to lean into him, and she could feel her own anticipation rising, a sort of nerves almost. She opened the second bottle containing lube and coated herself liberally with it, letting some drip down between his cheeks before she slid two slick fingers inside him. To make him comfortable, and to ensure that everything was as she had left it. He was no less warm, and no less keen, and she could feel the strap-on throbbing as though it really were her own body.

“Should’ve guessed,” he said, breath catching, “this was how you were planning on it. Murdering me with a long wait time.”

“S’right, you know me so well,” she told him, and he could probably hear the smile in her voice. She freed her fingers, taking her time as she pulled off the second glove and dropped it ceremoniously onto the floor. Then she shifted forward to let the head of the strap-on bump against him. Just a little more of that anticipation, and she took him by the hips and pressed forward, feeling his body part for her. Accept her. Welcome her. For a moment it was so much she couldn’t even see.

He was gasping, hands clawing at the cushions, and it took him ages before he was able to squeak out, “Okay, that’s… different.”

The Doctor ran a palm down his back, centering herself. (And if he found it grounding, well, lucky him.) “Different in this body, or altogether?”

“Different,” he said unhelpfully.

The Doctor slid her hand back up, tracing the length of his spine. Senasit or no, he would need time to adjust, and she was happy just to luxuriate in this moment. She skimmed her fingers along his side, slick with sweat, and down over his belly, then lower, to take him in hand. Apparently he hadn’t been expecting that move just yet—his hips rolled in response, which only resulted in drawing her deeper and extracting a growl from him.

“Not my fault,” she said, on a little bit of a breathless laugh, and stroked him. Her hand slid along his length with ease, gentle and firm all at once. (That was her style, she supposed. Gentle and firm.)

“You said you were going to fuck me, not tease me,” he complained, but there was little he could do in his current position, no way to move without inconveniencing himself more than her.

“You know, you can be a bit annoying when you’re impatient,” the Doctor said, pumping her fist again. “But I actually kind of like it right now.” Still, the urge to move was rising in her, too, and after a moment she tried it, a slow and shallow rock forward into him. Her nerves lit up under the strap-on’s feedback, as they shared the feeling of that slide, and she heard herself gasp sharply. “Oh….”

He pushed back against her and his muscles contracted in reply. It should have been too much (it was hard not to worry, he didn’t exactly have a great track record with self-preservation these days), but he seemed to want that, want _more_ and _now_ and _quickly,_ and there was a sound he made… a whimper. And it broke her to hear it, the fragility of it. Her hand left his cock and found his hip instead, and she gave in, gave him what he wanted, a firm, slow stroke, their hips coming together on every downbeat, the shaft nearly leaving his body every time she drew back.

She had come here angry. But the truth was that she wanted this for him, too. Wanted him to forget, just for a moment, how much he hated her and hated himself, how desperate he was to run from himself into blood and flame. He could lose himself in this, too, if he wanted. In pleasure and heat and the slide of her body against his. It was only a reprieve from the rest of their lives, but he could still have it.

Her fingers tightened on his hips, digging in as though that alone could help them both hold on to this moment. He was muttering wordlessly, lost in each thrust of her body as she drove sound from him and thought and any concern for appearance. It occurred to her that right then, she could probably get him to do anything: Praise her. Weep on cue. Beg. It was a strange feeling. She was surprised how much she liked it. Wondered if perhaps she liked it a little too much.

But it came out before she could stop herself.

“Say my name.”

“Doct—” He was so overrun, he didn’t even hesitate.

“I can’t hear you.”

Laughter tumbled out of him, an unthinking progression of notes. “ _Doctor…_ ”

She could have just finished on that alone, the laughter, the acknowledgement. She rewarded him by rocking her hips a little, finding a new angle, a slightly deeper thrust. He cried out and there was a ripping sound—he’d pulled so hard on the throw pillow that he’d rent it open, and feathers were spilling across the sofa in an unlikely cataract, eager to be free of their confines.

It was the Doctor’s turn to laugh. Even now, in a moment like this, he couldn’t stop himself from destroying something.

Not that it mattered, as she settled into the new angle and new rhythm, her entire nervous system singing with the feedback from her handy toy. Not to mention the feel of every place their skin touched and the scent of him—of both of them—filling the room. Orgasm shook through her at some point but she held her course, barely faltering. Eventually it occurred to her to shift her weight to one arm, braced on the sofa back so she could take him in hand again.

The gasp he gave sounded more like he’d choked on air, and his sense of the rhythm wavered, going erratic. She could tell it wouldn’t take much, but as she began stroking in time to her thrusts, he held on somehow, his whole body a trembling wreck.

And then: “S-say something nice.”

“What?” It took her a moment to work through the haze and make sense of the words. When they finally sank in, she could have laughed again. (Oh, you impossible man. Or… woman? It had been Missy’s line, after all.)

Her hips snapped against his as she leaned forward and wrenched him back by his hair.

“This time,” she hissed into his ear. “I win.”

And that was all it took to send him shuddering over the edge, a cry issuing from his throat in bursts that he didn’t even seem fully cognizant of, hands scrabbling for purchase that he could not gain. The only regret the Doctor had was in not being able to properly see his face as he convulsed gently around her, wringing every last bit of satisfaction from his position. She collapsed forward, not really intending to make him hold her up—despite how his arms shook, he shouldered her weight as she gasped into the back of his neck.

She thought maybe she said his name, but she couldn’t be sure.

It was moments and ages that they stayed there together, but eventually she had enough presence of mind to pull back (he hissed) and out of him. The sofa wasn’t quite wide enough for the both of them to lay next to each other, though. The Master turned over and flopped onto his back, heedless of the mess, and the Doctor found herself slumped on her side beside him, caught between the sofa back and his body, the strap-on dragging it’s lubey mess across his thigh.

He was panting, eyes roving over their bodies and the walls and the bookshelves, and then he lifted a closed fist above her head. He opened it before the Doctor could react, releasing a mass of feathers that rained down onto her cheek and hair. She brushed at them irritatedly (she was sticky and sweaty, and the feathers were not a welcome sensory addition) but his arms snaked around her, pulling her down against him, stopping her from moving. After a moment, she relented. Let her head fall against his chest, her eyelashes brushing his skin as she blinked. Slowly, their breath came back to them.

It was into that renewed silence that he finally spoke.

“...Hope I don’t get pregnant.”

The (wonderful) absurdity of that statement hit the Doctor full in the chest, like having the wind knocked out of her, and she didn’t realize she was laughing until it was too late to stop herself. Which turned out to be fine—he was cackling too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully the wait was worth it on this one! We tinkered relentlessly because it needed to be just. so. We're not nearly done, though. There's more to come (literally and figuratively) for these problem children.
> 
> Next Time: Grumpiness! A different sort of kidnapping! An unlikely rescue?


	10. Just Us Girls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avoidance, a phone call, and a bit of gender impersonation.
> 
> It's one of those days.

There was a bad side to his obsession with her.

Normally, he was unbothered by his own compulsive tendencies (they kept things going really), but this wasn’t what he’d had in mind. The point had been to keep his distance because the cost of anything else was too high. He hadn’t expected her to show up, bark orders, and slowly peel him apart until he was a desperate, pathetic wreck inside and out.

He could have said no, but he hadn’t because she had looked at him like she was about to set him on fire, and he _liked_ that. That was the problem.

So he busied himself in pointedly avoiding her the next day (once he’d showered and redressed and ate for probably the first time in… a week?) and it worked out nicely. He didn’t see her at all for thirty hours.

It wasn’t until he hit the fifty hour mark that he realized something might be amiss.

He eventually made his way to the console room, which glowed in complementary colours and did not have her squirreled away in a corner, working on the control circuits. So he brought up the cameras and did a quick sweep of the ship--the surveillance equipment wasn’t everywhere on the TARDIS, but she was still nowhere to be found. Then he checked the vectors at the piloting station and… they had landed. (How had that evaded him?) Going over the readings, he learned that they had been parked in the same place for forty-seven hours.

So she was missing.

The TARDIS was still, too still somehow. A few notification lights blinked at him from the console, but it wasn't anything important. The Master wondered why he hadn't noticed it before, the feeling like the ship was waiting for something. Had it felt like this all the other times she had landed and gone swanning off on some adventure? In that little cell, how would he have known?

Thinking of his imprisonment reminded him of something else; she had turned off some of the bio-locks to allow him to fly the ship, but what other safeguards were still in place? Was he trapped here inside her TARDIS, with the outer doors sealed against his egress? He could hack those controls eventually, of course—she had an edge as an engineer this time around (which galled him terribly), but his software skills were perhaps the best they'd ever been, and there was no programming she'd set that he couldn't undo. Eventually. But how long would it take? How long would he be stuck as a prisoner on this ship, alone, with her out there—no. No, best not to think about it.

Tentatively, he reached out and flipped a switch.

And the TARDIS doors swung open.

Well, that didn't bode well, but now he had to go investigate, didn’t he? Not to run amok, just to… find out what had happened.

He made for the exit and peered out onto a world he'd never seen before. There were rolling hills covered in purple grasses that made soft snicking sounds as they brushed each other in the breeze, and tall, branchless trees with tops that looked more like mushroom caps than anything, although the Master had never seen eight-foot tall fungi before. There was also a path twining its way from the TARDIS and off into the distance, the grasses shorn close to the ground, though a bit unevenly. The Master was just about to step out of the ship when suddenly… he heard a phone ringing.

He glared back over his shoulder as though he could make the object feel bad for enacting its given function. What were even the odds that someone would call her right now? He stalked back to the console and found the mobile in question (strangely old, given her current prefered era), picking it up to find the number listed as _Unknown._

Sweeping his fringe to the side, he thumbed the little icon and began. “This is the Doctor’s voicemail. Your call has been noted and logged, but the Doctor will not be getting back to you any time soon. While you consider your options, please leave your message at the tone—”

“It’s me.”

He blinked. “Why would you be calling your own mobile?”

“I’m calling you, aren’t I?” The Doctor’s voice sounded strange, a bit crackling and distant, the connection not quite right. It also sounded strained as she added, “Look, I need your help.”

“When has that ever been true?”

She huffed down the line. “Master, listen. Things have gone a bit, well not wrong, exactly. I wouldn’t say wrong. But a bit pear shaped. I’ve, er, got myself arrested, and I need you to come get me, and believe it or not, it gets weirder from there.”

“It usually does,” he drawled, leaning against the console with one hand.

“Don’t laugh! Look, I just need you to wait an hour and six minutes—don’t come out now, you have to wait an hour and six minutes, that’s very important—and then come and pick me up. You can follow the path I cut, it’ll lead you right to the village. But they don’t know about aliens here, so you have to pretend to be a native. And, erm… you also have to pretend to be a woman.” 

His eyes narrowed on a funny red switch that he was aching to flick. “Dresses don’t really work with these hips lately, dear.”

“No you don’t understand. Look, listen, have you ever heard of Frotakin?”

He went through a little mental rolodex. “Something something planet with four moons and rare tides, something something unusual flora, something something dual-gendered society that separates in public life?”

“Yes, that one!” He had to pull the phone away from his ear. (There was no need to shout.) “I thought it would be interesting to see, you know, considering that I’ve tried on ‘the other half’ for the first time. Or the first time I can remember anyway—no, I’m distracting myself. So, I knew that the Frotakin people divided every part of public life by their two genders. They shop separately, work separately, there’s even separated divisions of the government that don’t overlap! And there’s designated hours when only men are allowed to be outside, and others when only women are allowed to be outside. So I landed, and I waited for the women-only hours.”

“Does this story eventually arrive at a point?” he asked, getting more bored by the second.

“No, I’m just wasting your time. Yes, there’s a point! The point is that I thought I had it all figured out but I made one very big, very huge mistake, because the genders here don’t look like your average humanoid species. They look different. And I got arrested for being out during women-only hours.” A pause. “Because they think I’m a man.”

Never mind, definitely not bored anymore. “They what?”

“They think I’m a man!” Her voice was getting shriller. “I tried telling them, but the women are bigger here! And they have beards! I even lied and said I had to shave my beard off after I got gum in it and they kept me overnight to see if I got any stubble, which I didn’t, despite my best efforts, and now they won’t let me go unless a woman comes to collect me! So I need you to pretend to be a woman and, and... and come collect me.”

The universe had never deigned to bequeath gifts upon him, but today he could almost believe it had made an exception. “Well, I’ve got nothing on at the moment. Why not?”

He could hear her sigh of relief. “Good. But you have to wait an hour and four minutes, because it’s still men’s hours, and if you go out now you’ll be arrested, because you have a beard and they’ll think you’re a woman, and then we’ll both be languishing in prison forever. Or until we die and regenerate, I suppose, if we could manage to switch genders again. Although I’d hate to have to stop being a woman so soon.”

“Getting ahead of yourself,” he reminded her.

“Right, yes, good point. And you’re a great actor so it’ll be fine, we’ll be fine. Just watch out for the grasses, yeah? An hour and three minutes!”

“What about the—” And she’d already hung up. Typical.

The Master knew that the best use of his time would be to dig about in the databanks, muster up as much information as possible on Frotakin and its people. But honestly, where was the fun in that? So instead, he spent the hour listening to Billie Eilish albums and leaving rude comments on celebrity Instagram posts via the mobile. 

(People who spent their days taking artful pictures of single origin coffee beans, jade rollers, and crystal water decanters had it coming, really.)

Once the hour and three minutes was up, he exited the TARDIS, shutting the doors behind him, and peered down the trail. (What was that about the grass again?) His feet were pointed in the right direction, so he let them get on with it. After about ten minutes of walking, he found the path converging with a road of silver and grey gravel, and another ten minutes brought houses into view—first only a few but soon a whole village’s worth, plus some larger buildings that looked like they might be shops or other public structures.

There seemed to be two completely different styles to the public buildings—half had high windows and sloping angles, and were painted in soft colors and surrounded by blooming gardens, and people were milling about inside or out on the large porches, chatting with each other. The other half were square-shaped, constructed of dark wood and metals, the windows smaller and apparently covered by shades or curtains. And no one was going in or out.

The Master continued on until the road brought him to a town square, in the middle of which was a fountain bracketed by two statues which were as disparate as the buildings. One was a bronze gracefully posed figure, flowing robes and a long beard seeming to swirl around a body in motion. The other was painted black and showed a stern face and a square, blocky stance.

More of the planet’s natives were milling about here, all wearing brightly colored and ornate robes, some patterned or with silver thread. The colors rather clashed with each other, and with the purple grasses, but what really drew his eye were the beards. Every single person had a long flowing beard worked into elaborate styles, with multiple braids, big round curls, or even flowers and ribbons twined into the strands. It was quite a striking effect, even if there were far too many colors (no wonder the Doctor had wanted to come here) all at once.

On either side of the square stood two buildings, one squat and dark with shutters closed, the other tall and pillared, both of which had the appearance of town halls, or perhaps courthouses. On a hunch, the Master made his way towards the more elegant structure, marveling at the strangeness of a universe that often produced the same formations. The tradition of pillared official buildings all came down to an obsession with the Greeks on Earth (even though they hardly started the trend, cheeky buggers), but it was something that you’d find on other planets, in other cultures, for a myriad of odd reasons. Perhaps this particular architectural echo came from a cultural progenitor who was simply overfond of weight-bearing physics experiments.

As soon as his foot hit the first stair, it lit up, and a woman wearing a set of orange and yellow robes worked with little diamond patterns appeared from an alcove and stepped in front of him. Her beard was shorter than average and had been separated into three thick plaits tied with yellow bows. The Master cringed at the overall effect.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” she said in a pleasant tenor voice. She also dropped a swift curtsey. “May I have your name and purpose for the record, please?”

He gambled on a hunch. “The Mistress. Missy, if you like. I’m here to collect someone?” He curtsied in kind, though he was a little rusty and his back ankle wasn’t excited to flex in that particular direction.

“And I am Taline. This way, please.” The Master followed her up the wide steps that illuminated under their feet as they passed, through the arched entryway into a cool chamber lined with statues and ensconced light fixtures. A few people dropped little half-curtsies as they passed. “If you will tell me who you are here to collect, I can direct you to the proper department.”

“The Doctor?” he said, inclining his head a little at each acknowledging curtsey. 

“The Doc—” Taline began, and then winced. “Oh yes. We have a man here, by that name. I suppose you’re aware that he was arrested for being out during women’s hours?”

“He did mention that,” said the Master, his voice pitched a little higher than usual because that’s where Missy’s had been. (Mimicking one’s past selves could be ever so strange in hindsight.). “So absentminded, that one. I’ve told him, if I didn’t write out a daily schedule and stick it to his forehead, nothing would get done.”

Taline nodded, seeming to agree with that sentiment. “Well, good luck to you. Men can be such a handful, but I have to admit it’s been a while since we’ve had this sort of breach. Take the left hand hall, and either the stairs or the lift to the third floor where the justice in charge of his case will meet you. Good luck.” She curtsyed again and left him to find his own way.

The stairs were of a stone similar to marble, and wound their way upwards along a wall lined with paintings and light fixtures shaped like flowers and birds. At the top of the stairs he found a doorway with a window in it, and another bearded face (this one decorated with little silver beads) smiled at him through the open space.  
  
“Good day, Missy. I’m told you’re here to collect the man called the Doctor? My name is Marlee—I’m the justice assigned to his case. Please, come in.” The latch on the door clicked and it swung open to allow the Master to enter. Marlee’s robes, pink and accented with maroon trim and embroidered silver flowers, swished around her ankles as she made a little curtsey. Apparently that was going to keep happening. “I must admit, it has been a very strange two days. No one has ever broken the curfews in my lifetime, it’s extraordinary.”

“That’s my… man,” the Master said, rather enjoying this little trainwreck despite the circumstances. “Always looking for reasons to make a scene. He probably made the mistake, and then doubled down rather than owning up to it—you know how they get.”

Marlee arched an eyebrow at him, but turned and began striding down the hall, clearly expecting the Master to accompany her.

“He’s your husband, then?”

“Brother.” (hang on, did that make less sense—)

“I see. And yes, he did double down. In fact he claimed, _insisted_ even, that he was a woman. Repeatedly, and very loudly. He claimed, to quote him directly, ‘that was the whole point of coming here in the first place,’ and that he’d lost his beard in an accident.”

Of course she did. A classic ( _I wasn’t trying to melt it, Koschei, there was an accident_ ) move. “He _didn’t._ ”

That response, or perhaps the tone in which it was delivered, seemed to bring something out in Marlee, something familiar and conspiratorial.

“He did!” she insisted, leaning a little closer as though sharing a bit of juicy gossip. “He was terribly adamant, I almost thought he believed it himself. We even kept him under observation just to be sure. But you know what men are like. Always convinced that they are right and everyone else is wrong, even when their statements are patently ridiculous.” She shook her head. “My husband is like that. We tried the Evening Talk for a while, you know, but I got so tired of being spoken over I eventually gave up, and we keep the silence even at dinner now. It’s a shame, but it certainly is easier.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” said the Master with a dramatic roll of his eyes. “My parents tried it at one point and, _oh,_ you would not believe the mess it caused. Just thinking about it gets me all anxious. At least the silence keeps the peace.”

Marlee laughed aloud. “Indeed!” She paused before a tall door and rapped twice, then pushed it open. “Well, let’s see what we can do then.”

Inside, the Doctor was sitting on a small bed pushed against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest and a deep sulk etched into her face. She perked up a little when she saw the Master, however.

“See! I told you! I told you he—she would come, didn’t I—”

Marlee cut her off. “May I remind you that this is a women’s court. You have no voice here, young man.” The Doctor huffed loudly, but leaned back against the wall again. From a second door emerged two more robed figures, their clothes even brighter than Marlee’s, their beards longer and more intricately braided. Marlee curtsied at them. “Counsel Anicca, Counsel Trane, this is Missy, the sister of our… guest.” The two new women curtsied and then stood silently. The Master realized that he was expected to speak.

“Our family’s deepest apologies for my brother’s unfortunate lapse in judgement,” he said with a mournful bow of his head. “We were so worried about him. I just let him out in the yard—for some air, give him a bit of a run, you know—and when I turned back, poof! Nothing.”

The Doctor looked like she didn’t know whether to be happy or annoyed. Marlee was smiling sympathetically, but the two others looked less amused.

“Your brother?” one of them—Anicca, he thought—asked gravely. “Forgive me, but I do not see much of a family resemblance.”

(Right, that was the thing he’d been missing. Not that it was an impossible variance, genetically speaking, but people got ever so tetchy about that sort of thing, and he couldn't imagine that digression would go over well...)

He wasn’t sure if adoption was a thing in this society, so he couldn’t risk that. “No?” The Master gestured between the two of them. “Oh well, you know, different fathers.” Divorce might not be a thing either, but perhaps one of them had died? Fortunately for them, the women were facing him with their backs to the Doctor—so he was the only one who saw her clap a hand over her face. 

Anicca pursed her lips. “Well. This infringement is so unexpected that the laws have not been updated since the Separation was written. Sentencing calls for a fine, paid by the primary male of the household, and then the offender is to be given to a family in need of a new heir or surrogate father.”

The Doctor’s eyes appeared above her fingers, wide with surprise.

Meanwhile, the Master’s jaw was in danger of vacating its long-held position attached to his skull. “No… community service option, then?”

“Well, that is community service, isn’t it?” the other woman, Trane, remarked, although she seemed less stern than Anicca. “What better service could he provide than to a woman in need?”

The Doctor was mouthing the words _surrogate father_ at him.

“Wouldn’t she be in for a surprise,” he muttered before he was able to catch himself. His eyes flew back to the judges and he smiled. “Esteemed excellencies, may I be allowed a moment with my dear brother?”

Annica and Trane exchanged glances, then Trane shrugged. “If you like.” They exited the same way that they’d come in—Marlee gave the Master a sympathetic look and then followed. As soon as they were gone, the Doctor jumped to her feet and made to the other door, tugging at it.

“This is really not how I expected this trip to go.” The door didn’t budge, so she tugged harder. “They keep calling me young man! And after I finally got used to madam!”

“Tell me everything you know,” he said quickly, in an undertone (you never did know who could be listening in, and paranoia was one of the few things that had kept him alive). “I don’t have enough knowledge to be able to sell them on anything. Do they have a concept of gender dysphoria? Insanity pleas? Sacred rites? There’s got to be something we can exploit.”

The Doctor tried her sonic screwdriver on the door. It didn’t budge. She shoved it back in her pocket with a grunt.

“Wood,” she muttered, then turned to the Master. “I don’t know that much,” she admitted, matching his tone. “I didn’t exactly do research before coming here. It’s more fun to learn as you go. Usually. Sometimes it blows up in your face.” She glanced around her little prison in acknowledgement that this one _had_ blown up in her face. “What about you? You had an hour and three minutes, you must’ve learned something in that time.”

“I’m not your secretary,” he said with a sneer.

“You didn’t look it up, did you?” She shook her head. “Okay, maybe we can just climb out a window or something.” The Doctor went back to the bed and jumped up on it to peer out the high window above. Whatever she saw made her wince. “That’s not going to work.”

She sat back down on the bed, and patted it like she wanted him to come sit beside her. When he didn’t budge, she sighed and slumped back. “Well, what about the woman you came in with? Seemed like she liked you. What’d you do to make her like you?”

“I didn’t—” He stopped himself from arguing. No time. “Mostly talked about how tiresome men were.”

The frustration on the Doctor’s face warred with amusement, her nose scrunching up in that way it did. “Really? Like, girl talk? Bonding?”

“Yes,” he sighed. “It made her laugh, do you really not know anything at all?”

“I know loads of stuff!” the Doctor protested. “But maybe try that? Try to bond with them, make them laugh. Maybe they’ll decide they like you and they want to let you… me… us off with a warning or something.”

Much as he hated to think it, it wasn’t worse than any of his other ideas. “You don’t deserve me, you know.”

“You get the opportunity to badmouth me to a group of strangers and save me from husbandly servitude, then take me back to the TARDIS and lord it over me for weeks probably, and you’re complaining?”

“Just getting into character, love,” he said with a wink.

It was her turn to go open-mouthed. “Cheek!”

“Wait here,” he said (which made him giggle because she wasn’t going anywhere). He went to the other door and rapped twice, and sure enough the three women in their bright robes came filing back into the room. The Doctor looked desperate to say something, and the effort to keep quiet made her look both sulky and like she had ants crawling all over her.

“I trust that was helpful?” Annica asked, cooly.

“Helpful?” The Master feigned confusion. “Oh no, I was just checking in to see if he’d eaten breakfast this morning. It’s on me to make sure this one makes it from day to day, and believe me, it’s harder than it looks.”

There was a bit of a snigger from Marlee.

“Forgot his breakfast and his assigned hours?” Trane remarked. “I suppose that is a man for you.”

“This one thinks he knows everything,” he said, half whispering as though the Doctor couldn’t hear every word. “You get him started on any subject at all and it’s an endless speechifying grab bag of words. Sometimes I just nod and pretend to listen while I’m making grocery lists in my head.”

“My father does that,” Marlee said. “The man hasn’t done a moment’s work in the fifteen years he’s been retired, but he will go on about anything that isn’t relevant to the moment. My mother’s lost most of her hearing, so she doesn’t bother stopping him. Leaves the rest of us to put up with it.”

The Master gave a nod that he hoped looked sympathetic. (It could be hard to tell, this body was sneaky sometimes.) “Oh, the Doctor doesn’t bother with work, he’s far too busy with experiments. It’s all grand plans from my brother, big ideas and nowhere to put them.”

“And I suppose he leaves you cleaning up all the mess, like this one today?” Trane asked, and she looked a bit more sympathetic, too.

There was the opening he needed. The Master held his breath for a moment, almost a precursor to a yawn, all to get the bottoms of his eyes shimmering with gathering tears. “Our mother always said it was my job to look after him. Because his father is gone, you know?” He pressed his lips together, ducked his head and put a hand over his mouth. “I’m so sorry…”

There was a muffled sound, the Doctor covering either annoyance or amusement, he couldn’t tell which. (By all means, if she _wanted_ to get sent off to live with some family on this bizarre planet.) But he was surprised when Annica was the one to step forward and take his hand. “It shouldn’t be your job—he should have someone of his own gender to bother with him. Perhaps this is for the best, to have him assigned to someone else. To be put to some use.”

“No, I—” He gave a little gasp for good measure. “I understand, I really do. It’s just… this will break our mother’s heart, and I’m worried that she’ll blame me?”

“Mothers,” Trane sighed. “The only people in the world immune to the gender divide. I’m an eldest sister as well.”

“Maybe we should reconsider the sentence, Anicca?” Marlee offered. “We’re not men, after all, there is no reason to be harsh just to make a point.”

The Master didn’t dare interject, but he took care to look entirely wretched in that moment, one hand clutched to his stomach, a tear rolling down his cheek in timing that the hands of Fate couldn’t have planned better. The Doctor was hiding her face again.

“I suppose there’s no male head of household to pay the fine, in any case,” Anicca said after a moment’s pause. “Since this one apparently has no job. Perhaps we should drop the case. But I must say, this can’t happen again.”

“It won’t,” the Master blurted out, giving care to add just a touch of desperation to his voice. “I swear it. I’ll… chain him to the house, if I must.”

Marlee reached out for his hand this time, and Trane looked halfway to tears herself. “Really, Anicca, we must take care of our fellow woman,” she pointed out, softly, and Anicca at last relented.

“It’s hardly fair to punish you for your brother’s sins,” she agreed, nodding solemnly. “The separation was designed to eliminate exactly such things, though of course the men claim differently. So by forgiving this trespass, I believe we follow the spirit of the law, rather than the letter.”

Trane smiled brightly, and Marlee actually clapped her hands in glee, both voicing their agreement with the decision.

“Really?” The Master shook his head in disbelief. “Oh, your excellencies, your wisdom and kindness are a wonder. Truly, I am… beyond words.” His gaze fell to his own shoes, a picture of humility.

“There’s no need for that,” Marlee told him, grabbing his hand to squeeze again. She had quite a grip. “Women look out for each other.”

Anicca was giving the Doctor a stern look. “And let us hope,” she said, not speaking _to_ her but clearly for her benefit, “that this young man is appropriately grateful to be rescued by the kinder _and_ smarter sex.”

The Doctor looked up at her with a blazingly fierce eye, her lips pressed so hard together they were losing their color. But she kept her silence. The Master was actually a bit impressed.

“I’ll show you out the back,” Marlee told him. “And you can take him down the alley, no one will be out there.”

“Thank you,” the Master whispered. “We will go swiftly.”

(Ridiculous, this whole day...)

Anicca motioned for the Doctor to go to him, which she did, scowling all the way. Trane opened the door to allow Marlee to escort them out, giving the Master a bit of a wink as they went. But the Doctor stopped at the threshold, digging her heels in. “Ask them to let me speak,” she urged the Master under her breath.

His eyes slid over to hers, incredulous. But he knew if he didn’t ask, she would probably go off anyhow and ruin all the good will he’d collected. “Excellencies, your dearest pardon—may my brother be permitted to speak?”

Anicca and Trane exchanged glances. Then Annica shrugged a little. “I suppose, if he must.”

The Doctor stepped back into the room.

“You people are ridiculous, you know that?” The women bristled, but the Doctor barreled right ahead over whatever protests they might have mustered. “Look at this place! It’s broken. Stagnated. You’ve divided it in two on the basis of something as arbitrary as gender, and in order to keep that division you’ve had to double-down on every stereotype you could, just to pretend it makes sense. Anicca, do you even like bright colors? Or would you be more comfortable in something quiet and somber, more suited to your personality?”

Anicca blanched, looking halfway to anger, but then she paused. Looked down at her bright pink and magenta robes, one hand coming up to trace the loud floral design that wove its way along the folds of the fabric. She did look like she hated it, but the Doctor was already spinning away towards Marlee, holding her hands out in entreaty.

“And Marlee. I heard what you said about your husband—yeah, the walls aren’t as thick as you think, and I’ve got great hearing—and how you don’t even talk in your own home. The one place where you’re supposed to be together, but you’re all so segregated and regimented everywhere else that you can’t even talk to him around the dinner table. The man you married. The man you share your life with. Doesn’t that make you sad?”

Marlee looked halfway to taking the Doctor’s hands, and there were actual tears starting in her eyes as the Doctor turned again. 

“Trane. What you said about taking care of your fellow women was beautiful. But why stop there? If you weren’t so busy enforcing gender and enforcing division, what could you be together, all of you? Life isn’t about drawing up borders and walls. It’s about connecting, embracing people, embracing differences. You can’t turn away anytime a conversation gets hard or a compromise gets tricky. You have to work at it, you have to try to understand others. And if you do, you’ll find it’s not just men you understand better, but other women too. You’re not just genders! You’re people. All of you are people.”

The Master worked very hard not to roll his eyes or scoff or do anything that would undermine the argument. Not because he thought it was useful (did this really _work_ most of the time?) but because they needed to _go,_ and he hoped she hadn’t just botched their chances.

It was all silence. They stared at her, and the Master wasn’t entirely sure if it was surprise or anger or agreement that he was seeing in those women’s faces, but he didn’t really want to risk it. “We won’t take up any more of your time,” he muttered, reaching for the Doctor. She let him take her by the elbow and lead her out the back way.

It took them down into an alley full of refuse and old fruit peels. Literal fruit peels, as though they were in a comic book or a cartoon. The Master chose a path that took them by a lot of the dark, serious houses with their metal accents and shuttered windows, figuring that they wouldn’t run into anyone on the “men’s” blocks. When they finally left the last house behind and were once more on an empty road, the Doctor pulled free of his grip and punched him hard in the arm.

“What the heck was that?”

He hissed and rubbed at the spot, glaring at her in kind. “Thank you, dear, you were ever so helpful in rescuing me from a lifetime of fatherhood chained to a woman I’d never met with zero notice and no preparation because I decided to go faff about on a planet I’ve probably only heard of once, in a story, at school, and I barely paid attention then because _that’s just what I’m like._ ”

The Doctor let her hands drop to her side. “Well, yeah I mean… thanks and everything,” she muttered, hair falling across her face as she looked away from him.

He tucked a finger behind his ear. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I said thanks,” she repeated, raising her voice a little. “Been a long time since I was a dad. Not sure I’d be any good at it.” She made a face. “Not sure I was good at it the first time.”

“Better,” he decided of that response. “This planet is awful, by the way. And what was that thing you tried to tell me about the grass?”

The question came just in time, because she’d started to wander off towards the edge of the path, and had her hand out as if to touch one of the long blades. She pulled back abruptly. “Oh! Yeah, it’s really sharp. Literally _blades_ of grass. Lookit my legs!” She tugged her trouser legs up to show the slices across both her shins. “Apparently there’s little creatures that live below it, but they’re only a few inches high, so they’re below the sharp bits. Not so much fun for the rest of us.”

He looked at her hand. “So you almost cut yourself again.”

She looked at her hand too. “Yep.” And then up at him. “Not my best adventure.”

“Any particular reason now was the time for this trip?” He had to ask because if he didn’t he would just keep wondering, and when he wondered he started thinking about dissection (easiest way to figure out how something worked) and other unhelpful activities.

“Just stretching my legs,” she answered (she never could be forthcoming, of course). “Saw we were nearby and, well….” And then she was trying to look at him out of the corner of her eye, without him noticing. Grating, that. “You seemed like you wanted some space.”

And there it was. He turned on a heel and continued down the path toward the TARDIS. She scurried after him.

“Is that wrong? Are you cross with me?”

“Space is neglecting to drop by and pester me about your endruza spore cultures, not getting yourself incarcerated and then needing a quick rescue,” he said, and now he couldn’t stop looking at the grass and thinking about blood, Rassilon, he missed murder… 

“I thought you liked the spore cultures,” she gasped. “We talked about them for hours! Well. I talked. But you were a really good listener. And I didn’t _mean_ to get incarcerated, you know. That doesn’t usually happen!”

“Liar.”

“Well, not that often. And I can usually escape. Or talk my way out of it. Or take a nap and wake up to find out something else is going on that just so happens to be terribly fortuitous for my exact situation.” Her enthusiasm was ebbing a bit as she talked, though. “But you’re right. Had a bad one recently. Guess that’s why this scared me more than usual.”

“ _Scared_ you?”

The TARDIS was in sight up ahead, but he couldn’t stop himself from glancing back at her. The Doctor was watching him with bright, intense eyes and pursed lips. She nodded. Reached out and caught at his hand. “So honestly. Thank you.”

He looked down at their twined fingers, and felt his irritation bleeding out (a slow death, but an ending all the same). Rather than try to get it back, he dragged her toward the double doors, moving a little faster than she seemed keen to walk. “If you miss me being your lady friend so much, you could just kill me.”

The Doctor snorted, tripping over her own feet just a little. “That’s your move, not mine,” she told him. “I thought you’d enjoy it more. Pretending. Getting one over on me.”

“I would have preferred more time to develop the character,” he said, arriving at the blue box at last. “These things don’t just happen, you know.”

“Not really,” she admitted, digging the key out of her pocket and letting him in. “But I’ll keep it in mind.” Her body language changed remarkably once she was inside the console room again, her shoulders coming down from around her ears, her movements becoming more languid and relaxed. “But I still need to know. What was that?”

He frowned. “What was what?”

The Doctor turned and looked at him, coat swinging around her. “You… you _cried_ ,” she said softly.

“That’s what you’re stuck on?” He had to laugh. “Faking a cry is dead easy. Didn’t expect you to buy it.”

“Well I didn’t think you were actually upset,” she said, defensively. “I just didn’t expect the direction you took it in. I figured you’d make a few jokes about thinking with your downstairs brain, give them that ridiculous smile of yours, and swan off with me. Not get all… emotive.”

“Always go for pain over a laugh, makes people more uncomfortable so they capitulate easier,” he advised. “‘Ridiculous smile’?”

There went her shoulders again, up around her ears. She turned and poked aimlessly at the console. “That charming one you do when you’re pretending to be sweet. The O smile.”

That persona really had done a number on her, hadn’t it. (Made sense, it was some of his best work.) “Now I’m tempted to say something cruel, like… ‘I reserve that one especially for you.’”

She visibly shivered. “That wouldn’t be cruel at all.”

“No?” He stepped closer, encroaching on her personal space, and the Doctor looked up at him, one side of her face bathed in orange light, the other in blue shadow.

“No,” she repeated.

This was bad, the Master reflected. It was all very bad, and in this moment, he had no one to blame but himself. But if he were being well and truly honest, he’d gotten out of much more compromising positions than this whole setup. (Hadn’t he?) This was nothing in a span of ages. It was rainwater on a window.

So he kissed her, and let obsession have him for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, nothing particularly sexy in this chapter, blame the Master, he's... having a hard time. But he's basically over it now? Following chapter will have far less plot and brooding.
> 
> Next time: Musical instruments! Maintenance chatter! Missy... would be very pleased by where this is going?


	11. We Should Have Formed a Band

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> something changed  
> perhaps it's a good time to  
> visit our favorite melodies
> 
> or
> 
> A kiss, some reminiscing, a lot of sweat

Something, (the Doctor realized as the Master cupped his hand behind her head and kissed her) had just changed between them. Had she started that change when she surprised him in the den? Or had it been happening already, their last encounter merely turning up the heat on something that had already been simmering? She couldn’t be sure, but either way, in that kiss, in that moment, it finally reached a boil.

The kiss felt different than those they had shared before, and she could taste something new in it as his mouth worked against hers. What was it? Not capitulation, surely. Something close. Acquiescence, perhaps. Maybe even whatever passed for peace in the Master’s tormented mind.

Well, whatever it was, it tasted impossibly sweet.

Something inside of her—something between her hearts that had been taut and desperate—eased in answer to that kiss, and the feeling of it was so profound that she grasped his hand and pressed it to her breastbone, as though he might feel it too. As though he might understand (what he was doing for her, for them both), without the embarrassment of saying it aloud. She was too awkward for that, and he, perhaps, too fragile.

They kissed for seconds, for minutes, longer still, and the hand behind her head was so gentle that she almost imagined it belonged to someone else. But his mouth was certainly his own, heated, passionate as ever (she loved his passion, even though it usually came hand in hand with his rage and violence) now that the dam of his resistance had finally shattered.

Perhaps it was just the habit, developed when Missy had been the Doctor’s prisoner, when moments of kindness or vulnerability had been rewarded with gifts and attention (or perhaps it was something else, a desire to give this man, who had lost everything, something to hold onto). But the Doctor found, when they finally broke apart, that there was something she very much needed to do.

“Come with me,” she told him, keeping her fingers clasped around his. His head tilted curiously, (he always did that, as though he could see her better if she was at an angle) but let her lead him, draw him away from the console and into the TARDIS. Down the hall, left and left again, past the karaoke buses and the wardrobe hall, up a flight of steps painted with birds (she couldn’t remember why, or even who had painted them) and through a wide set of double-doors hewn of crimson wood, to the music room.

His lips parted ever so barely in surprise as he looked around a space big enough to be an auditorium, and more organized than most areas in the TARDIS, which no doubt (how often had Missy complained about the lack of cataloguing and categorization, and the Doctor was even messier now than she had been then) would appeal to him. Each instrument had its own little stand or platform, organized by type and occasionally by planet of origin, and there were chairs with velvet seats arranged in neat rows. The golden recessed lighting came up automatically as they entered, sparkling off of brass and silver and polished wood. One of the Master’s hands came up absently to trace a reeded instrument (a disrassioosoe, it was called) made for a species with three mouths as his eyes swept the space, flitting back and forth as though to make inventory before coming to rest in one corner. Then his gaze slid sideways to find her. “You _did_ keep it.”

She kept it. And he would find, if he put his fingers to the keys again, that Missy’s piano was still in perfect tune.

But rather than get into it, the Doctor turned away to explore the space herself. “Do you like music this time around?” she asked, trying to keep things easy and conversational, as much for her own benefit as for his.

“I assume you mean to play, but I haven’t tried yet,” he said, tucking his hands into his pockets. “You?”

“Haven’t tried either,” she admitted, and it felt both strange and fun that they were both about to explore this together. She looked around at the impressive display of options. “What do you think we should try first?” (Maybe there was a recorder in here somewhere….)

“No recorder—at all,” he growled, as though he could read her mind. She gave him her best pout, but he didn’t budge, a look of disgust taking root on his face.

“But what if I’m really good with it again?”

“Don’t care.” He backed toward a platform with a few bellows instruments—an accordion, and a few similar items—and sat on the edge. “If I hear it, I’ll break it in half.”

The Doctor rolled her eyes at him, but it was mostly for show. She didn’t really have the personality for the recorder anymore, anyway. Briefly, she considered picking up a guitar instead, but the instrument had meant so much to her last body that she might be rather devastated if she tried and found she had lost that particular gift. Better to leave it where it was, in her past, safe and incorruptible until another regeneration found their way back to it.

She gravitated instead towards a shelf full of handbells, as the Master took up an instrument from the platform he’d planted himself on. She couldn’t remember the name for the thing, but it was related in form and function to the Earth accordion, though it predated the accordion by roughly three centuries (and heralded from a different galaxy entirely). The handholds were carved of a wood that looked almost indigo under the lights, and she watched with interest as he expanded the bellows, pushed two buttons, and depressed the thing. The sound that issued from the instrument was rather like the sonic equivalent of watching a butter sculpture melt on fast forward.

The Doctor kind of liked it, but the Master instantly declared “No,” and set it aside. “Not that one.”

“Last body, I just knew immediately,” the Doctor offered, picking up a mid-sized bell. It had a pleasant ring as she swung it back and forth, so she tried that for a bit, but without having a group of other players (or ten hands) there really wasn’t more she could do. She set it down, discouraged. “Maybe I’m not very musical this time.”

The thought made her a little sad, actually. She knew she could carry a tune, actually she loved to sing, although she wouldn’t dare let anyone (well she had let him, but that was a one-time deal, or a special case, or _just shut up Doctor_ ) else hear her. Either way, that might not translate to instruments.

“Did you first learn the guitar in that body, or did you learn it before and come back to it?” the Master asked, moving over to a touchpad instrument that sounded like a theremin when he prodded it.

“Before. You know I’ve always loved rock’n roll. But I practiced a lot more in that body than I ever had before.”

“Suited you,” he told her, then stuck his tongue out at the theremin-soundalike and moved away from it. She dashed over to take his place as he picked up a french horn and peered down into the bell. 

“Yeah?” It’s not like she didn’t know how much Missy approved, but the compliment felt different now that she wasn’t that man any longer.

“Oh, come on, you knew it did. Kept playing it up with the sunglasses and the hair and hoodies.” His head snapped up suddenly. “We could have formed a band. Why didn’t we do that?”

“Oohhh, we should have! You’d have been an amazing keyboardist, I could’ve taught Bill on bass—bass is only sexy when women play it.”

“Problem is, Nardole probably would have wanted lead vocals, and I would have had to kill him.” The Doctor snorted, amused and finally remembered to take her finger off the toggle, letting the humming wail fade away. Turning back, she found that he was staring at her. “Look at you. I made a murder joke and you didn’t even scold me for it.”

“Guess I’m in a good mood. Also Nardol singing sounds like a bloody nightmare.”

“You could say that about anything related to him. Fashion sense. Grasp on thermodynamics. Enabling.”

“No, he was very good at enabling,” the Doctor countered, her smile matching his scowl. “Why do you think I kept him around?”

“Exactly,” he muttered.

“Why does that make you so upset?” she asked, eyes roving over a shelf of flutes and piccolos. She liked the piccolos, how small and ornate they were. She liked small things this time around, things that fit snugly into the palm of her hand and could be squirreled away into even ordinary pockets. She picked one up, toying with the keys as she tried to remember where to put her fingers. She had learned this once, although she wasn’t sure when. Or maybe she was just remembering the recorder. (There had to be one in here somewhere….)

The Master flicked a xylophone key with his fingernail, despite having a mallet in his hands. “Used to be my job.”

Oh. Now that was interesting. The Doctor made a little mental note of that (something to ponder later, when she was alone) and tried to find something light and cheeky to say.

“Well, it’s just you and me now, if you want to do some more….” Her voice trailed away as her eyes settled on the little stand and the polished wooden recorder it held. The Doctor stepped toward it. It wasn’t one of those she’d played, back when she was still small and favored too-big clothes and a moptop haircut. It was a different one, and she suddenly remembered buying it and placing it here after she’d been forced to regenerate, in memory of an identity that had been viciously stripped from her. She’d like being the man she became next, very much, but it had still troubled that man to remember what the Time Lords had done. What they’d taken.

Forced to regenerate. Forced to change against her will, to die and be reborn into something they chose for her…. Her hearts grew louder in her ears as she stared at the thing, the Master’s voice a distant hum that didn’t quite register. Until….

“Oi!” he shouted. “What did I say about the recorder?”

She turned, and he was watching her keenly, although he didn’t look angry, at least. In fact, his lips quirked in a smile as he tossed the mallet over his shoulder and backed away from the xylophone. One finger beckoned her in his direction, and it was somehow familiar. (Yana had done it, she realized, before he’d remembered who he was, had beckoned to her just like that, and she remembered being so smitten then). And she followed, without even meaning to, but she always _liked_ that, even when she didn’t want to admit it. Liked being pulled, whether it be by her curiosity, or by her drive to help, or by her love, or by someone else’s love.

Or by him.

The Doctor could remember so many other times she was pulled by him. Pulled to Yana without either of them even knowing who he was, then pulled to the only other Time Lord in the universe. Pulled to the man who had come to find her in her exile on Earth, who had played the villain for her so that she could take up her favorite role and save the day. Pulled to a boy called Koschei, whose clothes had been far too fine, and who had been far too tall, even when they first met. The Master had followed her around the universe for all their lives (all the lives that she could remember, anyway), but that pull was never as one-directional as the Doctor liked to pretend.

And sometimes, apparently, the Master noticed.

He halted and she stopped in front of him, beside… a drum set?

“Why don’t you give that a go?”

The Doctor blinked in surprise. “D’you think?”

“You’re being enabled,” he reminded her, lifting a pair of sticks from a pouch hanging off the hi-hat and proferring them. “Get going.”

The Doctor didn’t laugh at the way he bowed over them like a squire presenting a sword, though she wanted to, and expected that he wanted her to. She did take the sticks and drop down on the stool, settling her foot over the kick-drum pedal and looking at the kit around her with some perplexity. She was pretty sure she’d never learned how to play the drums.

“Well, how hard can it be? It’s just counting and hitting things.” She tapped one stick against the hi-hat, thoughtfully, then remembered it had a pedal too. She settled her other foot on it. “Right. I’ve got this.”

It took a moment, several moments, but when she got it right she felt it at once, and after guiding herself through a few basic rhythms she began to feel like she could expand, playing with the timing and the crash of the various cymbals. It wasn’t long before she was laughing as well. “Loud is fun!” she told the Master, who was squinting in a way that suggested he wasn’t sure that he agreed.

“I’m getting that impression.”

“It was your idea!”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t regret my choices,” he laughed. She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard him (this body) laugh like that, without malice or care. She spun the sticks in her fingers, executing a complicated sequence ending in a dramatically trilled hi-hat, before letting the drumset fall silent. She was breathing a little heavily with the exhilaration of it, and the Master was just… smiling at her.

“Well,” she suggested, “why don’t you play me something, instead?”

He glanced around the room as though considering what to try next, but despite obvious efforts to avoid it, his gaze eventually settled back toward the corner where the piano stood. Gleaming under the soft light, casting a deep declining shadow against the wall, monochrome keys neglected (only touched when she came down to tune it) for years. His feet carried him there, seemingly as hypnotized as she had been by the recorder, and the Doctor set the drumsticks aside, following him as he sat down at the bench, tucking his coat back behind him and lifting the lid.

The way the Master slid his fingers over the keys, it looked as though he was already playing without exerting pressure, ghosting his fingertips over chords and notes. She leaned against a shelf, not wanting to pull his attention and distract him, not wanting to stop the caress. Eventually he did pause, but it was only to reset his hands at the center of the keyboard. She waited, holding her breath.

… and then he began to play “Chopsticks.”

The dissonance, crossing from baited expectation to the most ridiculous song he could have chosen, stopped the Doctor in her tracks for a moment. And then she burst out laughing. He threw a glance at her ( _got you,_ it said) and chuckled too. But eventually that wasn’t enough for him, and he stopped, his head bowed over the instrument as though waiting for something.

Maybe, the Doctor thought sadly, (it’s like the guitar) he couldn’t really remember how playing the piano worked anymore, or didn’t want to remember. Maybe he’d lost that part of himself upon regenerating. It happened like that sometimes, dropping skills and expertise, picking up new ones from body to body, your brain always overwritten with new pathways that prioritized different things. She was about to say something, to pull him away as he had pulled her away from the recorder, when he took a sharp breath and raised his hands to the keys again.

It was Chopin.

The Doctor remembered Missy playing Chopin, but this was a very different piece than anything she had played on that piano. Missy’s favorite had been bold, demanding, a queen of a piece, just like her. She’d struck the keys heavily, the drama never wavering even as the piece moved from wild stomping to heavy elegance and back again.

This was different. It began slow, and a bit melancholy as he played with softness and tempo, dragging out the notes. There was something almost shy about it, almost dulcet, that made her think of how, after he believed he’d broken her irrevocably, his voice had taken on a gentle, soothing note as if to balm the wounds he’d worked so hard to inflict. ( _It’s over now_.) It made her think of O, his kind and adoring face, and how she truly believed that there was more of the Master in that disguise than he would admit, or even knew himself.

And then the piece came up, more of that drama coming to the fore as the volume increased and the tempo crescendoed with it. It seemed random, that change, and to come from nowhere. At moments, the notes were almost dissonant with each other, dramatic just to be dramatic, and that, too, was perfect for him. For this version of the Master who was more somber than Missy and yet even more prone to fits of wildness than she had been.

And then the drama faded, and the shy, sad charm returned as the final notes folded in upon each other, the volume falling like swirling leaves, down into stillness. The Doctor almost wanted to cry as he lingered there, the silence hanging on the air. She wondered what he would do if she went over there and climbed into his lap.  
  
She probably shouldn’t, though.

He drew his fingers away slowly, to prevent a sudden lack of pressure from disturbing the quiet, rolling his neck in a small stretch as he removed his foot from the peddle. “Will that do?” he asked without turning his head. The Doctor pressed her fingers into her palms.

“I almost forgot how much I like listening to you play.”

“It helped pass the decades.”

“We should’ve had sex on that thing,” the Doctor heard herself say. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t thought about it before. She’d thought about it rather a lot, actually, sitting there listening to the music for hours at a time, pretending to read, pretending that every ounce of focus wasn’t trained on Missy. Pretending there were no stirrings in her (his) hearts. Or elsewhere.

It still felt wildly reckless to say it out loud. And terribly transgressive. But the Master’s shoulders were shaking with silent laughter.

“You too?” He peeked over at her, in just the same manner that Missy used to, coy, but far too dangerous to be benign. It made the Doctor’s stomach swoop treacherously. (Strange, how different arousal felt in this body.)

“I always suspected that you knew,” she admitted. “Always wondered if you were onto me. Chuckling behind my back.”

“Nothing to laugh about back then.” The fingertips of one hand traced over the keys again, stroking downward. “You were all look and no touch. Too determined to be gallant.”

“Your face is gallant,” the Doctor blurted. (And who is she right now? Ryan? But how dare he say nice things, what is she supposed to do with nice things?) He could have teased her mercilessly for it. She _wanted_ him to tease her for it, or say something mean, then at least she would know where they stood. She was awkward this time around, and that was fine, it wasn’t the end of the universe. But she didn’t quite know what to make of it when he let that awkwardness pass unmocked.

“You know what’s strange?”

“What?” she asked, as she came up beside him and leaned one hip against the piano.

“The last time you had me here, I was doing all sorts of maintenance. But now you actually keep up with all of that.” His eyes scraped up from the keys to meet her gaze. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’d made an impression.”

“It’s interesting,” the Doctor observed, “how _that’s_ what you’ve struck on.”

“Is it?”

She waved a hand vaguely at herself. “You made me a woman.”

He snorted, his gaze trailing, taking her in. “Oh, is that how it was? Not like you to let jealousy get one over on you.”

It wasn’t the reaction the Doctor had been expecting. She’d thought that either he would be delighted that she was acknowledging his effect on her, his influence, or that he would grow sullen and remind her that she had been a woman before he was ever born. Mentioning it at all had been a risk, but she hadn’t expected him to just… not care.

“I dunno if I would call it jealousy, exactly,” she said. “Well, I guess maybe it was.”

“Always wondered why you never asked me about it. The switch.”

“I wasn’t sure there was anything to say. It just seemed so right for her. For you. Didn’t feel like I wanted to question it.”

He cringed, fingers tapping out a scale in b-flat. “That’s shockingly mature of you. No, I don’t like that at all.”

“ _Did_ something happen?” the Doctor asked patiently. 

“Why didn’t we?”

“What?”

His right hand continued the scale up until he bumped into her hip and could go no further. He stared at the point where they made contact. “Have sex on this piano.”

She sighed. “I don’t know. I never quite decided if I was scared for you, or scared _of_ you, or just scared of sex in general. Maybe I was just too attached to my whole aloof old professor thing. Maybe I was feeling mostly asexual, at least until you came along, and I didn’t know how to make the transition.” She shook her head. She did remember telling herself that acting on that desire would jeopardize Missy’s recovery (that word isn’t fair, is it, though it’s often how the Doctor thinks of the Master now—infected as a child, plagued by outside forces born of the Untempered Schism, of Rassilon’s meddling, of the decaying, patriarchal, and elitist culture of Gallifrey—which didn’t absolve the Master of responsibility for their choices, but _oh_ did it color them) but that seemed like a self-serving lie, a cover for the Doctor’s own internal struggle. “Feels like I did her a disservice, though.”

“You did me a lot of those,” he agreed, giving a trill at the keys right beside her. “Though I suppose I’d earned them. Would’ve been _fun,_ though.” He said the word ‘fun’ as though he’d just popped a balloon, or dropped an egg—a little bit of chaos in an otherwise straightforward sentiment. She wasn’t sure if it was the sound of that word or the movement of his hand that made her realize that she was very close to being trapped, physically speaking, between his body and the piano. What she _was_ sure of was how much she liked the idea.

She _wanted_ to be trapped, liked the thrill and the danger of it. She had always been a little afraid of the Master, even when he was Koschei, but it expressed itself very differently in different bodies, and right now, it was the sort of fear that excited her. She felt evenly matched with him this time around, and perhaps it was the certainty that they were both in a little bit of trouble that was driving her down this path.

“On the other hand,” she mused, letting her hand fall to the keys, just beside his, almost but not quite touching, “it does feel a bit like he left it for me. Like a gift.”

“He exchanged it before regifting it, though,” the Master tsked. “Packaging’s all knackered, totally different model. Not an equal trade.”

The Doctor could hear something in that tone she disliked. Self-deprecation and insecurity, perhaps even a conviction that he was now lesser than he had been. She knew that feeling, the feeling of looking back at a former regeneration and thinking it better than who she had become. And yes, she still wished Missy could have completed her journey, could have found that courage within herself to choose good and right. That she could have regenerated into something else, _someone_ else, who could feel happy and whole and stand beside the Doctor in that way they both longed for. But if that had happened, he wouldn’t be here, and the Doctor didn’t know how she could want both conflicting realities in such equal, fervent measure.

“I don’t know about that.” She tilted her head at him, a conscious imitation of that way he always looked at her. “From here, it looks perfect.”

There was something defiant about the way the Master met her gaze. As though he was daring her to keep that opinion, to think well of him, even if only in this (in music, in Missy, in sexual prowess, there were several ‘only’s here, so perhaps she could see his point). He slipped his hand over hers, splayed her fingers across specific keys and slapped her hand down onto them, producing a discordant drone that she knew from experience matched his mindscape to a tee.

She gave him a soft smile. “So. Loud drums and loud chords?”

“Too predictable for you?” He plucked her hand up and placed it further down the scale, arranging her fingers again. But his time he laid his hand atop hers and helped her to play a sequence of notes that warbled plaintively.

It wasn’t fair. She was trying to seduce him, he had no right to _flirt_ with her while she did that. No right to touch her hand and make her hearts pound. For an emotional wreck, he was being far to cool about all of this. “Master….”

“We’re going to have a problem,” he said, watching their overlapped fingers with some interest.

The Doctor forced herself to be patient. It was difficult. “Oh? And what’s that?”

“When I used to sit at this piano, I wore skirts.” His eyes shifted over, lingering at her hips. “Nice thing about skirts—they’re easy access.”

The Doctor sucked in a sharp breath. “You…” she needed something to say while she recovered from that abrupt about-face. “...weren’t wearing any knickers then, were you?”

The corner of his mouth curled as he shook his head. 

“Bugger,” she said, catching the back of his head with her free hand, tilting it as she leaned down to kiss him. Their lips only met for a moment before he was on his feet and pressing her against the instrument, the back of her thighs issuing another tuneless smash of keys while he laughed deep in his throat.

Loud and discordant was apparently her thing, the Doctor thought vaguely as she tried to suck that sound out of him and swallow it down for herself. She tugged at him, at his hair and his shirt and his mind, drawing him close, determined to trap him to her with equal ferocity, even as he pinned her there with the weight of his body. He allowed it, let her scrabble for every inch of him even if it meant that they couldn’t get much further, her velocity failing to overcome the inertia of their clothing with any real speed.

She was grateful for it, grateful for the ability to lose herself for a moment, to just focus on her conflicting (although they weren’t actually) needs to both devour him and have him fill her. Metaphorically speaking.

Well, okay, not only metaphorically.

She dragged her fingers across his back, but his jacket made the movement highly unsatisfactory so she shoved at him a little until he broke away. “Off,” she instructed, pushing it over his shoulders.

He gave an overacted glower, but did as he was told, letting his coat drop to the vacated bench. “You know, I doubt he would have been anywhere near this pushy.”

The Doctor pulled him back, and this time, with only the thin fabric of his shirt between them, the pressure of her fingers against his back (those lovely muscles) was much more gratifying. “You can’t be sure, though.”

He nipped at her jaw. “What, you think you would have stomped over all grumpy and enlisted your Scottish brogue in barking orders like ‘Clothes, off!’” His impression wasn’t quite as spot on as Missy’s had been, but still passable.

The Doctor grinned and tilted her head back, making room, inviting him to explore. “She’d have liked it if he did,” she points out. “Probably wouldn’t have barked it though. More just... said it, all quiet and stern.”

“Oo…” He laved his tongue over her jugular vein for a moment, seeking out her pulse. “Not ashamed to admit that would have worked on me.”

“Well. I’ll have to try it sometimes.”

The keys bleated out another dissonant rumble as her weight shifted, fading away while he sucked at the juncture where her shoulder met her neck, not hard enough to mark. She gave him a little moan of encouragement, and then a little surprised sound, like a bonus, at the scrape of his beard against her skin.

“Okay, yeah, liking all that.”

He took the opportunity to sink his teeth in around that band of muscle, worrying at it and then digging in to pry the tension from her frame. The Doctor wasn’t sure how he knew (did he know?) that she was tight there, how he found the knotted soreness and cut through it with sharp pain and pleasure. She fisted her hand in his hair and yanked sharply, almost able to feel the sing of it along her own scalp.

There was a hitching sound in his throat and a sudden snap against her spine—he’d twanged the back of her suspenders.

“Ow,” she told him, trying to sound stern and not laugh at the delightful ridiculousness of it.

“You started it,” he retorted, merciless. If you could say ‘merciless’ of someone whose eyelashes fluttered against the skin beneath her ear.

“Not sure that’s true,” she sighed in answer, and pressed a little closer, taking in the heat of his body. Of course, it was possible she had. They were so long ago, those days when she would climb into his bed to hide from her nightmares and shelter in his heat. Two lost little boys, and the tragedy was that neither of them recognized that the child who would become the Master was just as lost as one who had managed to become the Doctor for a second time. (Had it vexed them, the Time Lords who had reset her, that she’d found her way back to that name?) She smushed her nose into the Master’s shoulder, taking in his scent. Yes. Perhaps she had started it.

He pinched at her side, making her squirm. “Are you always this ponderous when you’re trying to get laid?”

“Was trying to decide if you were right,” she told him, finding his eyes. She really loved his eyes far too much. “I mean, you were right about one thing.”

“Only one?”

Cheek. “The trousers.”

He hummed in agreement, one finger tugging at the waistband of the garment on trial. “You’ve got them set up like an obstacle course, between the coat, and the braces being attached. Clearly didn’t expect this was how you’d be spending time when you picked that out.”

“Certainly not,” she agreed. “You want me to get out of them myself? Or do you want to do it?”

The Master raised an eyebrow, his expression somehow chiding. Right. She had started off by giving commands, and now she was changing it up. He didn’t like that, did he?

Alright. Consistency wasn’t always her strong suit, but she could manage it when it mattered. When people needed her. (She liked the idea of him needing her this way, needing direction and a firm hand. …oh yes, she liked that very much.) She caught him under the chin.

“I would like you to do it.” Put like a statement, but definitely an order.

His hands moved across her hips, undoing the buttons at the front of her braces, then tugging from the back to slide them up and over her shoulders, letting them fall down between her shirt and the back of her coat. (He was right, the braces made everything tricky, but she loved them, and maybe also got a bit of vindictive pleasure out of making things complicated for him.) The button on the trousers went next, then the zip (she shivered), but then he paused. “Boots on or off?”

Ohhh… right. Yes, she was wearing boots, wasn’t she? The Doctor stroked a hand through his hair. “Off,” she decided because it was simpler getting her trousers off with the boots gone, but also because there was something sort of fun and vulnerable about the idea.

Also, he would have to crouch down before her.

She should have realized thinking that meant he was bound to do something else entirely. Next thing she knew, he had curled a hand around the back of one knee and hitched her leg up by his hip, reaching back to loosen the laces while his free hand steadied her. She yelped a little, grabbing onto him (although in truth he had her quite securely supported) as he tugged the boot off by the heel and chucked it away, then switched sides and moved to do the same with the other. She could have giggled, but there was also that brush of her thigh along his to be considered, the press of her leg against his hip. 

She managed to work her hands in against his torso, untucking his shirt and tugging it up to slide her palms across his stomach and sides. Her other boot hit the floor somewhere behind him, and the piano twanged again as he dragged her hips away to push her trousers and knickers down in one sweep, then deposited her back. It was a new kind of fervency from him, (she was right about the thing that had changed) no longer careful about letting her see what he wanted. How much he wanted.

She dragged her fingers through his hair again, mussing it. His hair was _perfect_ for mussing—she might never let him comb it again. No, she _would_ let him comb it, just so she could muss it again. “Do you know something? You’re very handsome.”

“Even without the makeup?” he said with a wink, one hand sneaking under her shirt to map some skin for himself. “Sort of miss the eyeliner, sometimes.”

“That would look really hot,” she growled at him, and leaned in to catch his lower lip between her teeth.

Another crash as his hands landed on either side of her, pounding at the keys unawares. If there had ever been a pretense to this, it had fractured and littered the floor (they’d have to clean it up later with all their discarded clothes). His hip knocked her legs further apart, and he was closer then, much closer than he had been. Anticipation shivered through her, _want_ and _almost_ and _finally_ … and just a hint of apprehension too. Boldly, she lifted one knee, tucking her leg behind his, encouraging that closeness. Encouraging herself to focus on his body and his breath and the press of his hips and not on the awareness that she was about to try something incredibly, vulnerably new.  
  
He wasn’t the only one for whom this would change things. She should have realized.

“Kiss me.”

He took her face in his hands (her hearts beat out of time) and did as she asked, inhaling as though he could pull her into him, as though he might (her stomach swooped) absorb her. Her hands dropped to his hips, almost forgotten as she kissed him back, her thoughts calming and centering there, on the moment, on the two of them. She grazed his mind with hers, just wanting to touch him everywhere. Needing it, maybe.

His mind cushioned that touch, though he didn’t grant her access. (Probably a bit much, if he was planning to concentrate at all on the task at hand.) She wasn’t asking for that, anyway. But she shivered when he traced her upper lip with the tip of his tongue. Responded by tracing the skin just above his navel with a light, tickling touch. He took that hand up in his own again, but instead of laying it across the piano, he placed it over the fastenings of his trousers and gave her a look.

She waggled her eyebrows at him, clownishly, but got down to business all the same, making quick work of the fastenings before slowing a little to take things in. To follow, with one finger, the line of hair that ducked down under his pants—just a little teasing before she turned her hand and slipped it down beneath the fabric to cup him firmly. His eyes actually crossed.

“Why did I somehow imagine you’d be any subtler than that?”

“I missed it,” the Doctor told him cheerfully.

That got his attention. “Are you talking about my cock as though it’s somehow its own entity now?”

She grinned. Squeezed gently. “Is that weird?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation, despite how he stiffened in her grasp. “Absolutely. The weirdest thing you have ever done. And I’m including the experiment with the Erchion light source you found on that school trip.”

Her grin widened. “That’s not really going to dissuade me, though, is it? I mean, I glowed for a week!”

“Oh no,” he groaned. “Don’t, you… can’t. You can’t set me up like that.”

“What?”

He glared at her. “You say that and then I have to come back with ‘Bet I can beat that’ because literally _how_ am I supposed to say anything else.” 

The Doctor blinked. Thought about that for a moment. “Can you beat it, though?”

The change in his posture was like a chemical reaction, a solid converting instantly to a liquid. “Oh— _definitely._ ” His whole body thrummed like one of the eighty-eight piano wires behind her.

It was hard to look skeptical in the face of that. “Yeah? A whole week?”

“Do you actually think you’ll last a week before having another go?”

She gave him a languid stroke. “Now you’re just bragging.”

The Master shook his head. “That’s pure data, love. Based on your previous actions, by the way.”

“Oh, so it’s not your prowess, it’s just me being easy?” she chuckled. “That’s not really as impressive, is it?”

“Only if you assume you being easy has nothing to with being easy for _me_ personally,” he said wickedly, trailing a finger from the hollow of her throat down to the end of her breastbone. “Which it certainly does.”

The statement was so obviously true, it was hard to come up with a retort. Again she thought of those… moments… with Yaz, but the Doctor had been basically throwing herself at the Master since she dragged him on board, so she supposed the two couldn’t really be compared. She gave him another stroke, twisting her wrist a bit, adding a little more pressure as he moved from casual interest to full arousal in the palm of her hand. His lips brushed over an exposed bit of collarbone, one thumb sliding across her hip and down between her legs.

She made an embarrassing noise, somehow eager and pleasured and yet ridiculously strangled all at the same time. Not wanting to do it again, and wanting to taste him anyway, she pressed her face into his neck and sucked at his skin. His free hand slipped around the back of her head, cradling her to him as his thumb parted her and found her dripping onto the keys of the piano.

“How long have you been like that?” he murmured, and she wanted to cackle because this was clearly their thing now, and she would be lying if she didn’t admit that she liked it. (How long had it been since they had an inside joke?) But she didn’t laugh, because he was touching her like that, and because he was hard in her hand, pressing into it as she moved her palm down. No time for laughter, in a moment like that.

“Since ‘Chopsticks’.”

He sighed, sounding ever so put upon. It was terribly cute. “You mean to tell me I could have skipped the Chopin entirely?

"Apparently I’m just basic,” she teased.

His thumb dug in a little, an action that could have served as a warning if it hadn’t felt so good. “It’s fine, I’ll just kill you and we’ll be even.”

She nipped at his neck in answer. “How is that even?”

“Not to put a complete damper on this,” he said apropos of nothing, tugging her back by the hair, “but you have thought about how it works, haven’t you? Because you are a bit absent-minded about, er, everything, and I could just see you not putting two-and-two together and winding up in a very bad way.”

She arched her back a little. “Are you suggesting I don’t understand how sex works?”

“Not that, the other part.”

The Doctor blinked up at him. “What are you…” Then her eyes went wide. “Ohhh. Oh. No. I mean yes. I mean, I did think about it.” She was babbling. “I took care of that a while back. No worries.”

He looked relieved to not have to spell it out for her. “Right then.”

But she cocked her head at him. Smiled a little. “Thanks.”

“No, shut up,” he said, pressing a finger over her lips. “None of that.”

She fell silent. Looked up at him through the bit of hair falling across her face. Waited patiently until he decided she would keep quiet and removed his finger cautiously.

“Thank you, Master.”

“You really are the most…” He started muttering to himself in Old High Gallifreyan at that point, using several temporal tenses and a few very evocative curse words. His hand was still in a nice place, though, so she rocked down against it.

“That’s a bit sexy.”

“What, use of the past declarative conditional?” He slid the pad of his thumb down and then up again, though, so he couldn’t have been too put out.

“Yeah,” she agreed, rocking again. “There’s also something pretty transgressive about High Gallifreyan in a moment like this.”

“Rassilon would surely not approve.” 

“Yeah, that’s also sexy,” said the Doctor, and kissed him again, this time with more force. He bit her lower lip and the piano clattered at them again, which did not seem to bother him in the least, no matter how many times it happened. She rolled her fingers along his length, dragged her thumb softly across the head. It felt so good, especially when his hips stuttered in answer. “Come on then.”

He stared at her lips, as though watching the words issue forth granted him some sort of power. After removing his thumb, he shifted closer and let her guide his way. It was a bit awkward for a moment, trying to figure out how to stand at the right angle for her hips to meet his, the piano making distressed noises behind her. Not quite as glamorous as she had imagined it.

But then she was hitching one leg up by his waist again, and her arse was firmly planted (they should have moved, or at least closed the lid, but she wasn’t giving up this moment, not when they were finally here) on the piano keys, and was showing him exactly where he needed to be and—

 _Oh._ Contact.

She’d half expected him to hide, but instead he pressed their foreheads together and sought her eyes out with his own. There was something indescribably soft about it, that for a moment she forgot to focus on sensation at all… which only meant that when she remembered to think of it a few prolonged moments later, the whole thing came to her in a rush.

“How dare you feel like that,” he groused.

“How dare _I_ feel…?” she gasped back. So much more than fingers, and she had to remind herself to breathe, to relax, her sock-covered toes flexing in the air. Her eyelids fluttered, but she forced her gaze back to his. His fingertips skated along the outside of her left leg, but the rest of him remained perfectly steady, which she had to assume was a feat for him. Not only because of the position they’d taken up, but because she’d never known this version of him to be very good at stillness. It was for her benefit.

It broke her hearts a little.

Her impossible friend—so often violent and petty, so lost in self-immolation that he burned down an entire planet, and then tried to burn her down, too—he was holding himself at bay for her comfort. He had _considered_ her comfort. With as much as he had clawed, screamed at her, tried to blow her friends away without a thought, she hadn’t once contended with the possibility that he would be kind. It made her wonder in what other moments he had cared this much, what other careful consideration she might have missed.

The Doctor reached up and dragged her thumb across his lower lip, wet and glistening from their kisses, and sighed.

“There’s my good boy.”

His tongue darted out to swipe at the tip of her thumb before he sucked it into his mouth. She groaned, pushing it deeper between his lips, and a shudder ran through her. Her muscles flexed around him as her body let them both know what it wanted. His eyes gave a bit of a roll at the feel of it, and he scraped at her finger with his teeth, releasing it in the same moment that his hips rocked against hers, driving her back against the wood veneer.

The Doctor moaned again, clinging to him with both hands and one thigh as the pleasure of it shivered through her. It was an easy slide—she was adjusting but she was also _so_ wet, her body welcoming. More than welcoming. Demanding might be the word. She kissed his chin because it was there, beard pricking delightfully at her lips.

“Is this how you would have done it?” he asked, a cacophony of mismatched sound floating up from the piano as he let her down to prepare for another thrust. She bit her lips around a smile.

“Think I might’ve closed the lid.”

“Figures.” He pouted, but pressed up again, sliding deeper than before. She scrabbled at his shoulders.

“Oh….”

His hand came around to brace the small of her back, and he was able to establish a pace of sorts, though the frequent clattering of the instrument even threw him off (with laughter) occasionally. His arm wrapped securely about her felt almost as good as the way he moved inside her and the Doctor hadn’t known she would like it so much. Being supported, being _held_. Although she enjoyed the odd hug, she wasn’t nearly as touchy as some of her other recent incarnations. Or at least, she hadn’t thought that she was.

The noise was ridiculous (the poor piano) but nothing short of the TARDIS crashing into a comet could have thrown her attention off of him, off the way their bodies came together and the deep, tingling ache inside. She could feel her muscles fluttering around him, almost clinging to him, and her breath started coming in little huffs with every stroke.

“Got off here a few times, you know,” he said, dragging his cheek across her neck (he had figured out that she liked the beard, hadn’t he, oh no—) until gooseflesh broke out all over her arms. A moment later his free hand eased itself between their bodies and down to her clit, ushering her into their rhythm. Sparks danced along and under her skin, and she found herself arching, throwing one arm back to brace herself against the piano even as the other clung harder to him.

“I.. bet you were… beautiful,” she said.

He was watching her, rapt and fixated as he worked inside her and out. “I would cross my legs, knee over knee as I played and just… squeeze.”

She sucked in a breath. “Just that?”

“You have to repeat the motion all the way through, but it makes for a brilliant climax,” he said, giving a little tap with his fingertip. “I kept wanting to try it while you were in the room, but I figured you’d get cross and leave me alone for ages, and that would’ve been bad.”

The Doctor didn’t know _what_ she would have done. “It’s so different, isn’t it?” It occurred to her how lucky she was that he tried it first—it was a bit hard to imagine him thinking about how a woman’s body worked, how different it was, without having experienced it himself. He could be a little… myopic that way. But she could tell he was bringing that knowledge to bear as he circled his finger just so, and she heard herself whimpering aloud.

“Better, in some ways.” At the moment she was hardly inclined to disagree. “I miss getting wet…”

“It is kind of fun.” She could hear the sound it made, and the pressure of his strokes had her trembling a little everywhere. “Ah… that’s. Yes. _Yes_.”

The way he moved reminded her of the people on Artrus 7, the way they extracted nectar from the flowers of the lyreas tree. The process took time and diligence and also a searing sort of focus, the kind that it took years to cultivate before you could predictably extricate the usual three drops a day. The Doctor didn't believe that the Master had that manner of focus most of the time (it wasn’t a knock, their minds weren’t truly designed to work in that manner, on a single track, or at least she’d never thought they were), and then he went and did something like this, and—

Wait, was she a flower in this metaphor? A flower full of nectar? She shook her head a little, trying to dislodge the image. (This was exactly the thing about multi-tiered thought.) The point was that his attention was impressive, touching, and very, _very_ sexy.

She leaned up to kiss him, murmur his name. His hand increased pressure as he bit down on her upper lip and tugged.

“That’s so good,” she told him when her mouth was free again. Her lip felt swollen. “Master that’s— _ah!_ —so good, I….” She could feel it building, like a flood. Or maybe a fire, the way it tingled and burned, rising up from his circling finger and spreading throughout her body. She held on as best she could, figuratively and literally. 

“Come on, then,” he murmured, voice wavering, “show me.” And she figured he deserved to see it.

Her back arched, her muscles contracting as it swept over her in waves (so it was a flood after all) and she could even feel her toes curling. It seemed to last an age, and she was still trembling, little aftershocks running through her as she fell back against the piano. It made a pained sound, and she laughed weakly. Looked up at him.

“Don’t stop.”

He looked like he wanted to question that, but he bit back the impulse and slipped his hand away, raising it into her shoulder. With the other hand still at her back, he had her perfectly anchored and his hips charged then, not too quickly, but with a snap at the end of each thrust, like he could only almost reach what he was seeking. Like he needed more of her body and this was only a pittance. She wasn’t sure what more of her he could have, but in that moment she wanted him to have it.

Her hands found him, the back of his neck, the soft sweep of his hair, and she held onto him with her fingers and her thighs and the gentlest brush of her mind over his, and she pressed his brow to hers.

The Master screwed his eyes shut (as though it hurt somehow), and his lower lip trembled. His breath grew ragged, harmonizing with the sounds of her breath and their skin and her slickness, and the rattle of keys, and she was glad really, that this had happened here because it _was_ music. The sudden fluctuation in his speed, the staccato of his sigh, the way he held on in those final thrusts like the sustaining of a note that was just too gorgeous to cut short. The breathless cry that escaped him, though she was sure he wished it hadn’t.

The Doctor kissed him, to swallow the last droplets of it, sweet like the final notes of his Chopin performance. (She would have to find out the name of that one.) She also clenched a little around him, just for good measure.

“ _That’s_ not fair,” he said weakly.

She just hummed at him, and did it again. Held him close as their breathing slowed.

Eventually though, the position started to become rather uncomfortable. She loosened her hold, reluctantly.

“Emf. Gotta move I—ow—I think. ”

He slipped free of her, and in one somehow fluid motion (she had no idea how he managed it at all, it was very impressive) fell back onto the piano bench and dragged her to him, pressing his lips to the curve of her belly. She bent over him, stroking his hair and enjoying the feel of his kiss. It felt right for him to worship that spot, as sweat dried on her skin and slickness slid down her thighs.

“That,” she finally said, breaking the blessed quiet of the room, “was definitely worth the wait.”

He tilted his head up to look at her. “Is that the end of it, then? Got what you came for, now it’s done?” He wasn’t accusing, she realized, but genuinely curious as to the answer.

“Not even remotely.” She hooked both hands behind his head, cradling it, as he had cradled her back. “First, you’re going to take a shower with me.” She was sticky everywhere that she wasn’t, well, more-than-sticky. “And then snacks, and a nap. And then…” she paused, looking down at him with a twinkle in her eye, “Tomorrow, if you’re up for it, you can show me how you’re _supposed_ to use the sex harness.”

She watched with great satisfaction as his pupils dilated. “Oh my god _yes._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovely readers. Real life (and the state of the world) took precedence there for a while, so we're sorry this chapter took extra long. We've missed you all, and we hope the contents of this chapter help make up a little for our prolonged absence.
> 
> A few notes for this chapter:
> 
> The Doctor saying "loud is fun!" about playing drums is actually an homage to one of General_Stardust's favorite web comics, Questionable Content. Here is the comic in question: https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=863
> 
> And then there's the Chopin! (PlanetsideSonata had a lot of opinions on which Master plays which Chopin, it's a whole thing.) The piece the Master is playing is "Nocturne No.13, Op.48 No. 1 in C minor". (Here's a good recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c94nySKKoWE )
> 
> The Chopin piece that the Doctor remembers Missy playing is "Polonaise No.5, Op.44 in F sharp minor". (Here's a good recording for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BE2iS4-sag )
> 
> Next time: It's a smutty montage! Also, another nightmare. But you know, these things balance each other out?

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to our basically PWP, but with more plot than it should probably have for a PWP. And more feelings. And lots of references to previous canon stuff and fanon stuff, because that's obviously what we're in this for, right? Their ridiculous millennia-long mutual pining/angst because they're complete fools?
> 
> (Look, we're married, and we used to RP this stuff over a decade ago because we were also pining fools. Real life took us over for a long while, but then THESE TWO had to show up and ruin it with their feral bastard nonsense. So this happened.)
> 
> Other tags that didn't come up in this chapter will obviously come up later. ;)
> 
> We hope you liked it!


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